Marine Zoology 289 



Ross, had, twenty years previously, on his voyage to 

 Baffin's Bay, made some classical soundings. One, two 

 miles from the coast, reached a depth of 2,700 feet, and 

 brought up a collection of gravel and two living crustaceans ; 

 another, 3,900 feet in depth, yielded pebbles, clay, some 

 worms, Crustacea, and corallines. Two other dredgings, 

 one at 6,000 feet, the other at 6,300 feet, also brought up 

 living creatures; and thus, though the results were not at 

 first accepted, the existence of animal life at great depths 

 was demonstrated. 



With Sir James Ross's expedition we may be said to 

 have reached modern times; his most distinguished com- 

 panion, Sir Joseph Hooker, died as recently as 1911. It is 

 impossible to do more than briefly refer to the numerous 

 expeditions which have taken part in deep-sea exploration 

 during our own times 



Professor Edward Forbes, who " did more than any 

 of his contemporaries to advance marine zoology," joined 

 the surveying ship Beacon in 1840, and made more than one 

 hundred dredgings in the ^Egean Sea. Mr. H. Goodsir sailed 

 on the Erebus with Sir John Franklin's ill-fated Polar 

 Expedition; and such notes of his as were recovered bear 

 evidence of the value of the work he did. In 1868 the 

 Admiralty placed the surveying ship Lightning at the disposal 

 of Professor Wyville Thomson and Dr. W. B. Carpenter 

 for a six weeks' dredging cruise in the North Atlantic; and 

 in the following year the Porcupine, by permission of the 

 Admiralty, made three cruises under the guidance of 

 Dr. W. B. Carpenter and Mr. Gwynne Jeffreys. 



We owe to Forbes (1815-1854) the delimitation of this 

 zone of depth usually distinguished in European and other 

 seas. These are the Littoral zone, the Laminarian zone, 

 the Coralline zone, and the region of the deep sea corals. 

 The last two zones are now generally known as the Conti- 

 nental Shelf and the Continental Slope, and to these must 

 be added the floor of the deep ocean, a region which in 

 Forbes' time was regarded as uninhabited. Forbes, after 

 a very varied career, ultimately became a Professor at 

 King's College, London, and Curator of the Museum of the 

 Geological Society. His work in connexion with palseonto- 



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