THE REVISION OF THE ECHINI 113 



TO DARWIN 



London, Oct. 22, 1870. 



My dear Mr. Darwin: — 



Hearing you are in town, I write to ask you if you 

 will allow me to come and bid you good-bye before we 

 sail. I go to Ireland on Thursday next, in the evening, 

 to see tbe plunder of the last Porcupine Expedition, but 

 any time you can receive me before tbat it would be a 

 great pleasure for me to see you again before I leave 

 this side of the Atlantic, where I have had such a charm- 

 ing reception and have I trust learned a good deal which 

 will not come amiss in America. With the kindest remem-. 

 brances of Mrs. Agassiz and myself to Mrs. Darwin and 

 your family, believe me always 



Yours very truly, 



Alex Agassiz. 



to mrs. louis agassiz 



Belfast, Oct. 30, 1870. 

 Here I am again up at the poles, having left Annie 

 and children in London, while I took a run here to see 

 the collections brought home by the last expedition of 

 the English dredging ; they have not found much com- 

 pared to what they did in 1869, and in the Mediter- 

 ranean their work really amounted to very little. The 

 Mediterranean seems to be a deep sea of some 1500 

 fathoms deep, in which very little is found below a 

 certain depth, which really accounts for Forbes's former 

 view that below 300 fathoms nothing lived. Such is 

 actually the case in the Mediterranean, but this seems 

 likely to be the case with all inland seas where there is 

 no circulation of water, for the shallow water at open- 

 ing of Straits of Gibraltar is as much a barrier to the 



