96 MEMORIAL SKETCH. 



Her Majesty's surveying-vessel Porcupine, under the com- 

 mand of Captain Calver, was assigned for the service, and 

 proceeded, in 1869, to work over the ground traversed by 

 the Lightning, as well as to investigate new fields ; while 

 in 1870 it was sent to the Mediterranean. The following 

 passages from Dr. Carpenter's letters home will show his 

 interest in the scientific work and in the new scenes to 

 which he was introduced. 



Thorshavn, August 22, 1869. 

 I have now to tell you of a most remarkable and unexpected 

 revelation. Our dredgings last year brought in so little from 

 the bottom of the cold area except stones and sand, that we 

 concluded that animal life is very scanty under that low tem- 

 perature. Captain Calver, however, having bethought him of 

 attaching swabs to the dredge, so as to sweep the bottom as 

 well as to scrape it, these swabs have come up teeming with 

 life, when there was next to nothing in the dredge but sand and 

 stones. And though a great deal of this consists of common 

 things, yet we have obtained in this way some specimens of ex- 

 traordinary interest. Thus in one place we brought up several 

 specimens of the large Comafula Eschrichtii, a well-known 

 Greenland and Icelandic type, obtained there in shallow waters. 

 But our great catch has been an extraordinary sponge, with a 

 thick and dense branching axis like that of a Gorgonia, en- 

 tirely disconnected from the flesh which clothes it, and of a 

 bright-green colour. This came up in abundance on Friday 

 morning, the dredge having been down for several hours of the 

 night, and pulled in at four in the morning. W. T. and I were 

 on deck by five, though the morning was decidedly uncom- 

 fortable, cold, with a drizzling rain ; and we forgot all about 

 the weather in our interest in this and the abundance of other 

 things brought up by the swabs. They were perfectly gay with 

 bright-coloured Echinoderms, purple, red, and orange ; and 

 ■when I detached several of these and put them in a basin 

 with some of the green stems of the sponges, and bright- 

 yellow Comatulae, I thought I had never seen a more beautiful 

 display of animal colour. Yet this came from a bottom of sand 



