Deep'Sea Mystery 147 



Also it follows from the method necessarily employed 

 in their capture that great and extraordinary as are the 

 varieties of deep-sea fish now known, there must be a 

 very great number more who, by reason of their agility 

 or their size, have never been, and can hardly be ex- 

 pected to be, caught. Still, of shell-fish or slow-moving 

 species of shell-less fish a goodly harvest has been 

 gathered from all depths, even to the greatest, so that 

 it is now known that in the most profound abysses of 

 ocean, such as that vast chasm in the South Pacific on 

 the north and east of New Zealand, where a measured 

 depth of nearly thirty-one thousand feet has been 

 plumbed, there is abundant life at the bottom, although 

 it is, as far as is fe.own, of a low order. 



In these days of amazing strides in science it is 

 extremely risky to prophesy of anything that it can 

 never be fully investigated, but if there be one thing of 

 which it seems safe to predict that our knowledge has 

 almost reached its limit, it is that of life at great sea- 

 depths. For one thing, and that an exceedingly im- 

 portant one, such investigation can promise no great 

 commercial or even scientific gain. Its pursuit can at 

 the best be only rewarded by the acquisition of much 

 curious, out-of-the-way knowledge of a side of life at 

 present involved in deepest mystery. But just because 

 it is so mysterious, because the conditions of living at 

 those vast depths, under those amazing, almost unthink- 

 able pressures, is almost as difficult for our sense- 

 perceptions to apprehend as those of life in Jupiter or 

 Saturn or the Sun, so ardent seekers after new truth 

 will undoubtedly be irresistibly attracted by what I 

 should like to call Oceanology, the term Oceanic 

 Ichthyology being to my mind far too cumbrous for 

 ordinary use. 



It has several times been my privilege (not at all 



