Nov. 25, 1869 | 
NATURE 
101 
the North Atlantic sea-bed, which for years, if not all but 
overlooked, certainly do not appear to have received from 
zoologists the full credit which they undoubtedly deserved: 
geologists and paleontologists were evidently loth to 
abandon an hypothesis which in many respects suited 
their requirements. 
However long truth may remain dormant, it must even- 
tually assert itself in science as in all other matters, and 
the advancing strides of Biology and Geology soon de- 
manded that such problems should be definitely and 
conclusively solved, and that the depths of the sea also 
should be carefully searched for the missing links of 
evidence requisite to complete their respective chains of 
reasoning. This was not felt to be the case in England 
alone; already in Scandinavia we find the savazts of 
Norway and Sweden working with their slender means in 
the right direction, and assisted by their Governments with 
a hearty good-will and determination which could not 
fail to ensure valuable results, such as have already been 
brought forward by Sars, Nordenschjold, Torrell, and 
others. 
In England, men of science, equally impressed with 
the importance of this inquiry, wished, with an honourable 
pride, to see that the country which had so long claimed 
the empire of the sea, should, in a question of so purely 
marine investigation, do something worthy of herself; and, 
being fully alive to the impossibility of doing so without 
the aid of the Government, applied themselves first to 
the task of procuring such assistance. Since it is an 
acknowledged but melancholy fact, that science does not 
in England either obtain the high position in society, or 
the influence with the ruling powers of the country which 
is accorded to it on the Continent in general, it is a subject 
for congratulation that the urgent appeals made to the 
Government should have in this instance proved so suc- 
cessful; and after the Government had provided the 
ships and equipment necessary for the expeditions of last 
year and this, it is a further subject for congratulation 
that the direction of these scientific explorations should 
have been entrusted to such able men as Dr. Carpenter, 
Prof. Wyville Thomson, and Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys, who 
constitute the present committee. 
The expedition of last year being the first of its kind, 
had, as might be anticipated, many difficulties to contend 
with ; the ship itself, besides starting at a late season of 
the year, was ill suited to the undertaking, was provided 
with but extremely inefficient winding machinery, im- 
perfect appliances and instruments, and moreover, the 
observers and their assistants had, as it were, to serve an 
apprenticeship in the management of such operations. 
This year, besides being fortunate in securing unusually 
favourable weather during the major part of the operations, 
all the above-mentioned difficulties had been provided 
against ; whilst, at the same time, the experience’ gained 
during the last year’s cruise contributed very greatly to 
the complete success of the expedition as a whole. 
As yet, it would be premature to attempt any description 
of the results of these explorations, for the Report which 
was commenced at the meeting of the Royal Society last 
Thursday is not yet concluded, but is to be continued at 
its next meeting; sufficient, however, has been already 
brought forward to prove satisfactorily the great im- 
portance of the data obtained to science in general. 
Besides corroborating, and in some respects correcting the 
conclusions deduced from the operations of the last year’s 
expedition, many new facts and observations have been 
collected, whilst the supply of specimens and materials for 
examination which have been brought home will no doubt 
give full occupation to the members of the committee for 
some time to come, besides obliging them to bring to their 
assistance the services of the physicist, chemist, and mine- 
ralogist, each in their several departments. 
The practicability of exploring even the deepest portions 
of the ocean bed may now be considered to be fully estab- 
lished ; the conclusive proofs brought forward showing 
the existence of warm and cold areas of the deep-sea 
bottom, in close proximity to one another, each inhabited 
by its distinct and characteristic fauna, is as surprising as 
it is important in its scientific bearings, and particularly 
in its relations to geology and palzontology ; whilst the 
investigations into the temperature of the different ocean 
zones, and the nature of the gases contained in the sea- 
water at various depths, are intensely interesting and 
suggestive. 
The question as to the existence of an azoic ocean zone 
at any depth, must now be regarded as finally settled in 
the negative. The hypothesis which appeared to Edward 
Forbes to be warranted by all the data which the science 
of his day could supply, must now be abandoned ; it is 
certain, however, that all who knew him will do his 
memory the justice of believing that, were he now alive, so 
far from regretting the necessity of withdrawing a sugges- 
tion which appeared to explain several important points 
in science now once more involved in obscurity, he would 
have been the first of the converts to the views now proved 
to be more correct, and the first to congratulate the members 
of the deep-sea dredging committee upon so successful 
and brilliant a termination of their labours. 
DAVID FORBES 
PHYSICAL METEOROLOGY 
I.—ITS PRESENT POSITION 
T is a well-known remark of the historian of science 
that our progress in astronomy has been made in 
exact accordance with certain laws which regulate the 
advancement of knowledge. Neither the march of the 
sun by day, nor that of the moon by night, is more rigidly 
surrounded and circumscribed by law than the march of 
that intellect which has successfully interpreted celestial 
motions. 
We had first of all an observing age. Thousands of 
years ago in the plains of the East we had astronomers 
who, albeit with imperfect instruments, lacked neither zeal 
nor intelligence in their nightly study of the stars. Many 
of their theoretical ideas were untenable, nay, even absurd, 
but yet they served to bind together into a formal law the 
mass of observations which their nightly industry collected. 
And so step by step our knowledge of celestial motions 
progressed, until it culminated in the discoveries of Coper- 
nicus and Kepler ; and we were presented at last with a 
bird’s-eye view of the solar system, taken, as it were, from 
without, in which that which appears to be, finally gave 
place to that which is, Thus the first stage was passed, 
and astronomers had now another question to put to the 
universe; it was no longer What are the real motions of 
