Mr. J. Miers on the Genus Cortesia. 427 
capable of swallowing a fish twice as large as itself, still it 
would not attempt to swallow the large fish and enormous 
hooks that are used in the shark-fishing. I need not say that 
this fact corroborates Dr. Giinther’s opinion as to this fish 
being a deep-sea species. 
I am further indebted to Professor Bocage for a specimen 
of a coral dredged in this same valley. It probably belongs 
to the family Iside, and appears to me to belong to a new 
genus, which I have described as Keratoisis Grayit. 
Is it not to these deep-sea valleys that we must look not 
only for new and strange forms, but even for some of the 
supposed recently extinct forms, which may be yet found 
lmgering in these abysses, safely there outliving the ravages 
of time? Professor Sars calls attention to one fact that would 
seem to point in this direction ; for, in a memoir* on the fossil 
animal remains of the quaternary formation in Norway, he calls 
attention to the fact that certain remains of marine animals, 
found in a semifossil condition in these formations, are found 
living when looked for at certain depths below the existing 
level of the sea. Professor Sars mentions that the bottom of 
the Gulf of Christiania, in the neighbourhood of Drébak, for 
the space of some three-fourths of a Norwegian square mile, 
and in an abyss of some 70 or 80 up to some 7 or 8 fathoms 
in depth, is strewed with Oculina prolifera, Linn., occurring 
in great masses of from one to two feet in diameter: never- 
theless not a single living polyp is ever found on these 
masses; but at the same time they have the appearance of 
having been comparatively recently torn away from the 
place where they originally grew. Off the Norwegian coast, 
however, this very same Oculina prolifera, Linn., is found 
living in great quantities at the depth of 300 fathoms and 
lower. 
LV.—On the Genera Cortesia and Rhabdia. 
By Joun Miers, F.R.S., F.L.S., &e. 
CorTESIA. 
This genus was established by Cavanilles, in 1797, upon a 
plant collected by Louis Née in his overland journey from 
Chile to Buenos Ayres. His account of this little-known 
plant is upon the whole correct; but, as there are some points 
of structure unnoticed by him, I will here add the results of 
* T only know Prof. Sars’s paper from the abstract given in the ‘Cor- 
respondenz-Blatt des zoologisch-mineralogischen Vereines in Regensburg, 
21. Jahrgang, 1867, pp. 72-74. 
30* 
