278 THE DEPTHS OF THE SE.l. [chap. vi. 



hands of Dr. Stimpson for description at the time 

 of the terrible catastrophe which laid a great part 

 of that city in ashes, and were destroyed ; but, by 

 a singularly fortunate accident, our colleague Mr. 

 Gwyn Jeffreys happened to be in Chicago shortly 

 before the fire, and Dr. Stimpson gave him a series 

 of duplicates of the mollusca for comparison with 

 the species dredged in the ' Porcupine,' and a valu- 

 able remnant was thus saved. M. de Pourtales, 

 writing to one of the editors of Silliinan's Journal 

 on the 20th of September, 18GS, says : « The dredg- 

 ings were made outside the Florida reef, at the 

 same time as the deep-sea soundings, in lines ex- 

 tending from the reef to a depth of about 400 to 

 500 fathoms, so as to develop the figure of the 

 bottom, its formation and fauna. Six such lines 

 w r ere sounded out and dredged over in the space 

 comprised between Sandy Bay and Coffin's Patches. 

 All of them agree nearly in the following particu- 

 lars : from the reef to about the 100-fathom line, 

 four or five miles off, the bottom consists chiefly 

 of broken shells and very few corals, and is rather 

 barren of life. A second region extends from the 

 neighbourhood of the 100-fathom line to about 300 

 fathoms ; the slope is very gradual, particularly 

 between 100 and 200 fathoms ; the bottom is rocky, 

 and is inhabited by quite a rich fauna. The breadth 

 of this band varies from ten to twenty miles. The 

 third region begins between 250 and 300 fathoms, 

 and is the great bed of foraminifera so widely ex- 

 tended over the bottom of the ocean 



"From the third region the dredges brought up 

 fewer though not less interesting specimens, the 



