Xxii FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



be undertaken with one particular problem in view, or it may be 

 organized, like the Challenger expedition, with the co-operation of a 

 number of specialists. 



The French took the lead in organizing zoological expeditions. 

 As early as 1800 they sent out the Oeographe, Naturaliste, and 

 Casuarina, zoologically conducted by Bury de St. Vincent, Peron, 

 and Lesueur. Further expeditions followed with Quoy and Gaimard, 

 Lesson, Eydoux, Souleyet, Dupetit-Thouars, and others as zoological 

 guides. The English whaling industry gave early opportunity to 

 not a few naturalists; and it is now a long time since Hooker went 

 with Sir James Ross on the South Polar expedition and Huxley 

 went on the Rattlesnake to the Australian Barrier Reef. The 

 Russians were also active, one of the more famous travellers being 

 Kotzebue, who was accompanied on one of his two voyages (1823-6) 

 round the world by Chamisso and Eschscholtz. In the early part 

 of this century the Americans were also enterprising, the work of 

 Dana being perhaps the most noteworthy. It would require several 

 pages to mention even the names of the naturalists who have had 

 their years of wandering, and have added their pages and sketches 

 to the book of the world's fauna and flora, but such an enumeration 

 would serve no useful purpose here. 



There is, however, one form of zoological exploration which 

 deserves a chapter to itself, that is the exploration of the Deep Sea. 

 Several generations of marine zoologists had been at work before 

 a zoology of the deep sea was dreamed of even as a possibility. It 

 is true that in 1818 Sir John Ross had found a star-fish (Astro- 

 phytori) at a depth of 800-1000 fathoms, but this was forgotten; 

 and in 1841 Edward Forbes dredged to no purpose in fairly deep 

 water in the ^Egean Sea. Indeed those who thought about the 

 great depths at all deemed it unlikely that there could be life there, 

 and if it had not been for the practical affair of laying the ocean 

 cables, we might possibly have been still in ignorance of the abyssal 

 fauna. 



But the cables had to be laid no easy task and it became 

 important to know at least the topography of the depths. Cables 

 broke, too, and had to be fished up again, and when that which ran 



