Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys on Dredging among the Hebrides. 391 
had procured at a depth of 1260 fathoms (7560 feet) in lat. 59° 
27' N., long. 26° 41! W., about halfway between Cape Farewell 
and the north-west coast of Ireland, were originally a shallow- 
water species, but had gradually, and through a long course of 
generations, accommodated themselves to the abnormal conditions 
incident on the subsidence of the sea-bed*. The starfishes in 
question, which he refers to the Ophiocoma granulata of Forbes 
(Asterias nigra of O. F. Miller), appear, however, to belong to 
a different species, which inhabits deep water. In an important 
paper by Professor Sars, on the distribution of animal life in the 
depths of the seat, he states that Ophiocoma nigra (O. granulata, 
Forbes) is certainly found in shallow water, viz. from 2 to 30 
fathoms, on the coast of Norway, but never at a greater depth 
so far as is yet known, and that it does not range north of the firth 
of Drontheim. He is of opinion that Dr. Wallich’s species is 
Ophiacantha spinulosa of Miller and Troschel, a well-known and 
Greenlandic species, which is not littoral, but rather a deep-water 
kind, viz. from 20 to 190 fathoms; and he infers from Wallich’s 
own account that the last-named species, instead of Ophiocoma 
nigra or granulata, was the one taken by the ‘ Bulldog’-sounding 
in 1260 fathoms. Dr.Wallich also adduces his discovery, at a 
depth of 682 fathoms (4092 feet), in lat. 63° 31’ N., long. 13° 
41’ W., of two testaceous Annelids, which he assumed to belong 
to “known shallow-water forms,” as further evidence of an 
extensive submergence of the North Atlantic sea-bed. These 
Annelids were named by him Serpula vitrea and Spirorbis nau- 
tiloides. But Professor Sars disputes their being shallow-water 
species. The former he identities with his Serpula polita 
(= Placostegus tridentatus, Fabricius) ; the latter is referred by 
Morch{ to the Serpula spirorbis of Linné. The one is regarded 
by Sars as a deep-water and not littoral species, being found on 
the Norwegian coast in 20 to 800 fathoms; the other has a 
wide bathymetrical range, from low-water mark to 300 fathoms. 
I suspect, moreover, that there has been some mistake in the 
determination of the Spzrorbis, and that it belongs to another 
species than that to which Wallich has assigned it. As to the 
accuracy of his statement that he procured living starfishes from 
a depth of 1260 fathoms, under the circumstances which he has 
described (viz. “ convulsively embracing a portion of the sound- 
ing-line, which had been paid out in excess of the already 
ascertained depth, and rested for a sufficient period at the bottom 
to permit of their attaching themselves to it”), no reasonable 
* Locxcit..p. 41. 
t Vid.-Selsk. Forhandl. 1864: Hr.Sars, “Bemzrkninger over det dyriske 
Livs Udbredning i Havets Dybder.” 
t Naturhist. Tidsskr. 1863: ‘‘ Revisio critica Serpulidarum.” 
