Sea-bottom procured by HM.S. ‘Challenger.’ 291 
It may be taken as proved that there is no want of Foramini- 
feral life in the Mediterranean. Prof. W. C. Williamson long 
ago pointed out that the “white mud” of the Levant is mainly a 
Foraminiferal deposit ; I found a similar mud covering the bottom 
along the Tripoli coast; Mr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys has dredged Fora- 
minifera in abundance in the Bay of Spezzia, Captain Spratt in 
the Agean, Oscar Schmidt in the Adriatic, and I myself at various 
points in the Western basin along the northern coast of Africa, 
That Foraminifera, especially Globigerine, abound in its surface- 
water at Messina, is testified by Hickel in the passage cited by 
Prof. Wyville Thomson; and when it is considered how large an 
influx of Atlantic water is constantly entering through the Straits 
of Gibraltar, and is being diffused throughout the Mediterranean 
basin, and how favourable is its temperature-condition, it can 
searcely be doubted that, if the doctrine now upheld by Prof. 
Wyville Thomson were correct, the deposit of Globigerina-shells 
over the whole bottom-area ought to be as abundant as it is in 
the Atlantic under corresponding latitudes. Yet I found the 
deeper bottoms, from 300 fathoms downwards, entirely desti- 
tute of Globigerine as of higher forms of animal life; and this 
was not my own experience only, but was also that of Oscar 
Schmidt, who made a similar exploration of the Adriatic. In my 
first visit to the Mediterranean, in the ‘ Porcupine’ (1870), many 
hundredweight of the fine mud brought up by the dredge from 
great depths in the Western basin were laboriously sifted, and 
the siftings carefully examined, without bringing to light more 
than a stray drift-shell here and there. And in my second visit, 
in the ‘ Shearwater’ (1871), I examined all the samples of bottom 
brought up by the sounding-apparatus from great depths im the 
Eastern basin, with the same result—giving all the more care to 
this examination, because Capt. Nares (probably through not having 
kept separate in his mind the results of the deeper and of the 
shallower soundings which he had previously made in the Medi- 
terranean) assured me that I should find minute shells imbedded in 
the mud. 
I can see no other way of accounting for the absence of Globi- 
gerina-ooze from the bottom of the Mediterranean, save on its 
shallow borders, than by attributing it to the unfavourable nature 
of the influences affecting the bottom-life of this basin—that is to 
say, the gradual settling-down of the fine sedimentary deposit 
which forms the layer of inorganic mud everywhere spread over 
its deeper bottom, and the deficiency of oxygen and excess’ of 
carbonic acid which I have shown to prevail in its abyssal waters 
giving them the character of a stagnant pool—these influences 
acting either singly or in combination. 
Another fact of which Prof. Wyville Thomson is fully cogni- 
zant, and to which he formerly attached considerable importance 
as indicative of the bottom-life of the Globigerine, is unnoticed 
in his recent communication: I refer to the singular limitation 
of the Globigerina-ooze to the “ warm area” of the sea-bed between 
