146 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. [CHAP. iv. 



hastening to join the dodo and the gair-fowl among 

 the creatures of bygone times. 



We now steered somewhat to the north of west, and 

 early on the 1st of September sounded in lat. 60 17', 

 long. 2 53', at a depth of 103 fathoms, and a bottom 

 temperature of 9 '2 C. We were still in the shallow 

 water, and had not touched the arctic stream. All 

 day we slipped over the edge of the plateau, dredging 

 chiefly well-known Shetland forms, and the tempera 

 ture falling slightly, reaching in the afternoon at' a 

 depth of 203 fathoms, 8'7 C. (Station 74). The next 

 sounding, about ten miles farther north, gave us the 

 stratum of intermixture, a temperature of 5'5 C. at a 

 depth of 250 fathoms. We ran about thirty miles in 

 the night, and early next morning dredged in the 

 frigid water again in lat. 60 36' N., long. 3 58' N., at 

 a depth of 344 fathoms, with a bottom temperature of 

 1-1 C., the temperature at the surface being 10'l C. 

 Five-and-twenty miles to the westward, we sounded 

 again at noon of the same day at 560 fathoms, with 

 -1'2C. 



In these two or three last cold dredgings the 

 character of the bottom was much the same gravel 

 of the older rocks, and clay. The preponderance 

 of echinoderms and sponges was again remarkable, 

 and the paucity of mollusca, though in this region 

 we took a single specimen of a mollusk which 

 seemed to be greatly out of its latitude. This was a 

 pretty little brachiopod, Platydiaan omioides, SACCHI 

 (Morrisia, DAVIDSON), hitherto found only in the 

 Mediterranean. The size of this specimen greatly 

 exceeded that of Mediterranean examples of the 

 same species a singular circumstance which leads 



