CHAPTER XIII 

 DEEP-SEA CHIMiERAS 



IN this chapter it becomes necessary for me to depart 

 almost entirely from my usual practice of drawing 



upon personal experience, for very obvious reasons. 

 The extraordinary creatures of which I am about to 

 write I have called chimaeras, since their aspect is quite 

 outre and startling, even horrible, enough to justify the 

 epithet fully. And, fortunately for the peace of mind 

 of sailors, the latter very rarely come in contact with 

 them. They have their abode in varying depths of 

 the dim and silent sea, and only of comparatively late 

 years has any study of them been possible. 



The epoch-making voyage of the * Challenger ' 

 furnished much of the material for Dr. Giinther's 

 magnificent work on deep-sea fishes, and since that 

 time other nations, notably and principally the Ameri- 

 cans, have been carrying on the same deeply interesting 

 work. One striking result of oceanic investigation 

 has been the establishing as a certainty that fish, highly 

 developed and normally organised fish, can and do 

 exist at great depths, but what those depths are cannot 

 in the nature of things be determined with any accuracy. 

 For the net in which these fish are caught is open all 

 the time both descending and ascending, and con- 

 sequently fish which are well known to be surface 

 dwellers have been drawn up, much distorted, from a 

 depth of two thousand fathoms or more. 



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