4 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. [CHAP. i. 



Still the thing is possible, and it must be done 

 again and again, as the years pass on, by naturalists of 

 all nations, working with improving machinery, and 

 with ever-increasing knowledge. For the bed of the 

 deep sea, the 140,000,000 of square miles which we 

 have now added to the legitimate field of Natural 

 History research, is not a barren waste. It is inhabited 

 by a fauna more rich and varied on account of the 

 enormous extent of the area, and with the organisms 

 in many cases apparently even more elaborately and 

 delicately formed, and more exquisitely beautiful in 

 their soft shades of colouring and in the rainbow-tints 

 of their wonderful phosphorescence, than the fauna 

 of the well-known belt of shallow water teeming with 

 innumerable invertebrate forms which fringes the 

 land. And the forms of these hitherto unknown 

 living beings, and their mode of life, and their rela- 

 tions to other organisms whether living or extinct, 

 and the phenomena and laws of their geographical 

 distribution, must be worked out. 



The late Professor Edward Forbes appears to have 

 been the first who undertook the systematic study of 

 .Marine Zoology with special reference to the distribu- 

 tion of marine animals in space and in time. After 

 making himself well acquainted with the fauna of 

 the British seas to the depth of about 200 fathoms by 

 dredging, and by enlisting the active co-operation of 

 his friends among whom we find Mac Andrew, Barlee, 

 Gwyn Jeffreys, William Thompson, Eobert Ball, and 

 many others, entering enthusiastically into the new 

 field of Natural History inquiry in the year 1841 

 Forbes joined Capt. Graves, who was at that time in 

 command of the Mediterranean Survey, as naturalist. 



