30 THE OCEAN FLOOR 



thin metal wire, later a piano string, for the unwieldy 

 hemp line, an innovation first used from the United 

 States survey ship, "Tuscarora" in 1874 and later in- 

 troduced by Lord Kelvin in his automatic sounding 

 machine. 



The increased interest in the configuration of the 

 ocean bottom and the fauna inhabiting great depths led 

 to the circumnavigating British deep-sea expedition 

 with the "Challenger," sent out in 1872 by the British 

 Admiralty and the Royal Society of London conjointly. 

 During three and a half years the "Challenger" cruised 

 the three oceans, almost as far south as the Antarctic 

 Continent and as far north as Newfoundland, collecting 

 a wealth of information out of depths ranging from the 

 surface down to over 3,500 fathoms, and including 

 water samples and temperatures, deep-sea sediments, 

 and an abundance of deep-sea organisms, both 

 invertebrates and fishes. The zero line of Forbes was 

 thus pushed down to depths of at least 15,000 feet. 

 Samples from totally unknown types of sediment car- 

 peting the ocean floor, especially the mysterious red 

 clay, were brought up and subsequently studied in the 

 laboratories. The results from this great expedition were 

 published in a series of over 40 quarto volumes, the 

 Challenger Reports, which, not without reason, has 

 been called "the Holy Writ of Deep-Sea Oceanography." 



In the following decades a number of other expedi- 

 tions were sent out from different countries, among 

 which those led by Prince Albert I of Monaco, the great 



