352 Mr. J. F. Whiteaves on Deep-sea Dredging 



often made dredging quite impracticable, also that I was 

 alone (so far as scientific help was concerned) nearly the whole 

 time, I may be pardoned for thinking that the results of 

 these investigations, so far as they go,- are very encouraging, 

 and such as should stimulate to renewed exertions in so pro- 

 mising a field of inquiry. 



I have previously shown (in the ^ Canadian Naturalist ' for 

 1869) that a large proportion of the Greenland invertebrates, 

 probably three fourths of the whole, range as far south as the 

 northern part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence down to Gaspd 

 Bay. In Canada many marine animals (such as, for example, 

 the oyster and the two species of Crepidula which are found 

 attached to it) occur off" the southern coast of the Bay of Cha-> 

 leurs, but not in the northern part of the same bay. A 

 number of characteristic New-England species inhabit the 

 coasts of Nova Scotia and New Bj'unswick, which do not ap- 

 parently range further north than the Bay of Chaleurs. 



On the Admiralty Charts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, an 

 irregular line of shallow soundings may be seen to extend from 

 a little above the northern extremity of the Island of Cape 

 Breton, round the Magdalen group, and thence, in a westerly 

 direction, to Bonaventure Island. To the south and south- 

 west of this line the water is uniformly somewhat shallow, 

 and never exceeds 50 fathoms in depth. To the north, north- 

 west, and north-east of the same line the water deepens 

 rapidly, and perhaps even precipitously. Principal Dawson 

 suggests that the Subcarboniferous rocks of which the Magdalen 

 Islands are composed, and which appear again on the mainland, 

 in Bonaventure County, may possibly crop up under the sea 

 in the area between the north-west side of Cape Breton and 

 the mainland of New Brunswick, as well as that of the counties 

 of Bonaventure and Gaspd, in the Province of Quebec. This 

 would account, possibly, for the shallowness of the water in 

 the area in question. Whether this is the case or not, it seems 

 not improbable that this extended line of shallow soundings 

 may form a natural barrier to those arctic currents, if any such 

 there are, which sweep down the Straits of Belle Isle in a south- 

 westerly direction, and may tend to deflect their course in a 

 bold curve into and up the river St. Lawrence. 



In the centre of this river, opposite Murray Bay, about 80 

 miles below Quebec, Principal Dawson has dredged quite a 

 large series of Labrador marine invertebrates ; but how much 

 further up the stream these salt-water denizens extend, we 

 have yet to learn. 



North of the Bay of Chaleurs the fauna of the Gulf of St. 

 La\\'rcnce has a purely arctic character. The species of which 



