10O NATURE [Mov. 25, 1869 
numerous scientific societies and philosophical institutions 
in all the leading towns. 
Were all who in London and the provinces are 
associated for the promotion of science carefully calcu- 
lated, we should find that there are now about 120 learned 
societies, with an aggregate of 60,000 members; and 
deducting from the number at least one-fourth for mem- 
bers who belong to more than one society, we arrive at 
the interesting fact that there are, in the United King- 
dom, 45,000 men representing the scientific world, or 
in the proportion of fifteen in every ten thousand of 
the entire population; the “upper ten thousand” of 
the aristocracy of learning being thus three times as 
many as the “upper ten thousand” of the aristocracy 
of wealth, But are we satisfied with the result? Are all 
the societies equally active in encouraging the pursuit of 
science? Are their terms of admission too loose or too 
narrow? Without entering into the internal management 
of our learned societies, we might wish for a fuller and 
earlier publication of their transactions, for the collection 
of more complete technical libraries, properly catalogued 
and classified, and for a better action in the way of grant- 
ing tokens of recognition to successful discoverers and 
investigators of the great arcana of Nature. 
Within the last twenty years, at least half as many new 
societies have been formed for the promotion of science, 
and evidences are not wanting to show that an enormous 
-stimulus has been given to science in every direction. 
In the number of scientific works published, and in the 
circulation which they have had; in the variety of scientific 
journals started and successfully maintained; in the 
respect paid to Science—ay, in the very popularity 
which greets Science, wherever it exhibits itself, we see 
abundant reason for congratulation. A brilliant future 
opens itself for the cultivation of science. Happy will it be 
when “many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be 
increased ;” happy when men will realise that “ pleasure 
is a shadow, wealth is vanity, and power a pageant ; but 
knowledge is ecstatic in enjoyment, perennial in fame, 
unlimited in space, and infinite in duration.” ‘Truly, in 
the performance of this sacred office the man of science 
“fears no danger, spares no expense, looks in the volcano, 
dives into the ocean, perforates the earth, wings his 
flight into the skies, enriches the globe, explores sea 
and land, contemplates the distant, examines the minute, 
comprehends the great, ascends to the sublime, no place 
too remote for his grasp, no heaven too exalted for his 
reach.” LEONE LEVI 
THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA 
(pH opening meeting of the Royal Society on Thurs- 
day last was attended by a numerous assemblage of 
men of science, especially attracted by the announcement 
that Dr. Carpenter, representing a committee consisting 
of Professor Wyville Thomson, Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys, and 
himself, would communicate the results of the deep-sea 
dredging explorations, carried out in the course of the 
past summer and autumn in the Porcupine, a vessel 
expressly fitted out and placed by the Government at the 
disposal of the committee for this purpose. 
At the conclusion of Dr. Carpenter’s lucid exposition, 
which was necessarily but a mere 7ésvmé of the report 
itself, it appeared quite evident that rumour had not at all 
exaggerated the scientific value of these explorations, for 
it is not too much to say that the results of this expedition 
must be classed with the most important which of late 
years have been brought before the notice of the scientific 
world. 
More than a quarter of a century ago, the late Edward 
Forbes, one of the first naturalists who took the common 
oyster dredge from the hands of the fisherman to convert 
it into an instrument for extended scientific research, after 
employing it in the commencement along the shores of his 
native little Isle, and subsequently in the seas surrounding 
the British Islands, and in other parts of Europe, found, 
upon comparing his observations, that there appeared to 
be evidence in favour of the existence of a succession of 
natural zones of marine life according to depth, which 
zones, however, seemed to become more and more sterile 
in organisms in descending order; until at last it suggested 
itself that a zone might be arrived at, at a depth roughly 
estimated as exceeding 300 fathoms from the surface, 
containing but sparse traces of organic life, or even such 
an one as might be entitled to the appellation of Azoic. 
This latter hypothesis was brought forward by him as a 
suggestion worthy of consideration, and not as a dogma 
or established principle, as he was fully aware that in the 
dredging explorations which he had been able to carry out 
up to that time, he had never reached so great a depth as 
even 300 fathoms, below which the sea-bottom was in- 
ferred to be comparatively or altogether sterile ; on the 
contrary, whilst advancing the conclusions which seemed 
to be but natural deductions from the data then at his 
disposal, he continually kept pointing out that whether 
such an hypothesis was correct or not, it was of the highest 
importance to science to prosecute these researches further, 
so as to ascertain the true nature of the deep-sea bottom, 
for, to use his own words in his “ History of the European 
Seas,” “it is in its exploration that the finest field for 
marine discovery still remains.” 
Before the author of this suggestion had time or 
opportunity for carrying out such explorations as would 
have verified or disproved his hypothesis, he was unfortu- 
nately cut off by an early death; whilst the hypothesis, in 
the state in which he had left it, was without further inves- 
tigation eagerly grasped at and accepted by men of 
science, both at home and abroad, for the special reason 
that it appeared to afford a simple explanation of various 
phenomena which had long remained enigmas to both 
paleontologists and geologists ; as, for example, amongst 
others the occurrence, in various periods of the earth’s 
history, of vast accumulations of sedimentary strata 
apparently altogether devoid of organic remains. 
Although this hypothesis, when somewhat modified, may 
possibly be found to hold good in respect to certain forms 
and conditions of life, the results of some casts of the 
dredge made in depths of from 270 to 400 fathoms in Sir 
James Ross’s Antartic Expedition, and subsequently, the 
deep-sea soundings described by Dr. Wallich as made in 
1860, in the Bud/dog, in vastly greater depths, demonstrated 
quite conclusively that it could no longer be retained as a 
generalisation. 
It now appears strange to look back and observe what 
very little notice was taken of these new data; more 
especially of the important researches of Dr. Wallich on 
