488 
NATURE 
[March 10, 1870 
held their meeting at Manchester, the complaint which they 
brought against the Science and Art Department of breach of 
faith, and repudiation of engagements made with them, has 
been pressed upon the Government by a strong force of Lan- 
cashire and Yorkshire members of Parliament. 
THE British Medical Journal states that Prof. Agassiz is 
ill from nervous prostration and over-work, not being able 
even to write letters. 
Tue Gulstonian Lectures for this year will be delivered at the 
Royal College of Physicians, by Dr. Maudsley, on the 11th, 
16th, and 18th of this month, the subject being ‘‘ The Relations 
between Body and Mind, and between Mental and other Nervous 
Disorders.” The Croonian Lectures will be on “ Aneurism of 
the Heart,” and will be delivered by Dr. Gibson on the 23rd, 
25th, and 30th of March. The subject of the Lumleian Lectures 
on the Ist, 6th, and 8th of April, will be “‘The Natural His- 
tory and Diagnosis of Intra-Thoracic Cancer,” by Dr. J. R. 
Bennett. The lectures will commence in each case at 5 o'clock. 
TuE Acclimatation Society of Paris has awarded to Mr. P. L. 
Simmonds its silver medal, of the first class, for his paper on 
“Silk cultivation and supply,” read before the Indian Confer- 
ence of this Society last year. A similar medal has been 
awarded to Mr, G. W. Hart, of Hayling Island, for his labours 
in oyster culture. 
THE Instituto Tecnico of Palermo has published another part 
of the Giornale di Scienze Naturali ed Economiche, which well sus- 
tains the character of the work. Among the papers therein 
contained we notice—‘‘ Avifauna del Modenese e della Sicilia,” 
‘* Sui materiali per costruzione di mattoni refrattarii per le zol- 
fare,” ‘‘ Nuove specie di funghi,” ‘‘Determinazione del luogo 
chimico nelle sostanze aromatache,” and ‘ Studii paleontologici 
sulla fauna del calcario a telebratula janitor del nord di Sicilia.” 
Besides all this, the part contains eight numbers of the Bud/etino 
of the Royal Astronomical Observatory at Palermo, in which are 
records of observations astronomical and meteorological, notices 
of sun-spots and magnetic perturbations, and on shooting-stars 
and meteors, with lithographic illustrations. It is gratifying to 
find that even in Sicily science is making progress. 
THE Government of India has lately sanctioned the com- 
mencement of the Damoodah Canal, at an estimated cost of 
about 540,000/7. Its total length will be just 100 miles. One 
end of it will terminate in the heart of the Bengal coal-fields, 
and it will thus be the means of affording a cheap line of trans- 
port for carrying coals into Calcutta, relieving at the same time 
the railway of a portion of that traffic. A secondary but very 
important result of this canal is likely to be the drainage of the 
tract of land lying between the railway and the Damoodah, 
which for the last seven years has been desolated by malarious 
fever. 
WE learn that the success of the Lectures for Women during 
the present term has equalled the most sanguine expectations of 
the originators of the scheme. Between seventy and eighty 
ladies are now attending eight courses of lectures, the number 
of attendances (counting each lecture separately) being in all 
115. The committee proposes to issue in June a complete 
programme of the lectures for the next academical year. The 
present courses will be continued during the next (Easter) term 
at the present hours, unless special notice of a change be given. 
WE have received from the Hydrographic Office of the Ad- 
miralty a copy of the notice to mariners stating that, on or about 
the 1st of April next, a telegraphic station vessel will be moored 
by the International Mid-Channel Telegraph Company off the 
entrance to the English Channel, in from fifty-five to fifty-nine 
fathoms water, in lat. 49° 20’ 30” N., long. 6° 17’ W. of Green- 
wich. The vessel will be painted black, with the words ‘ Tele- 
graph Ship” in white letters on her sides ; she will have three 
masts. At the top of the mainmast a large black cone will be 
hoisted during daytime, and a powerful globular light at night, 
elevated thirty feet above the sea, which in clear weather should 
be seen from a distance of six miles. A flare-up light will also 
be shown every fifteen minutes during the night, from an hour 
after sunset to an hour before sunrise. During foggy weather, 
day or night, a bell will be rung continuously for half a minute 
every quarter of an hour ; and for the first six months, or until 
the 1st day of October 1870, a gun will be fired every quarter of 
an hour, and after that date every hour. The commercial code 
of signals for the use of all nations will be used on board, to the 
exclusion of all other codes, and none other can be noticed. In 
reference to this, M. Delehaye remarks in the Audletin of the 
Association Scientifique of France that it will be of great service 
to navigation by saving time, and obyiating risk and expense. For 
meteorological purposes also he believes this station will be very 
useful. He might have extended his list. 
ON THE TEMPERATURE AND ANIMAL LIFE 
OF THE DEEP. SEA* 
ils 
THE present discourse embodies the most important general 
results obtained by the exploration of the deep sea in the 
neighbourhood of the British Isles, carried on during the summer 
of 1869 in H.M. surveying vessel Porcupine, with the view of 
completing and extending the inquiries commenced in the 
Lightning expedition of 1868, of which an account was given 
by the speaker at the Friday evening meeting of April 9, 1869.+ 
The expedition of the Porcupine was divided into three 
cruises. ‘The first of these, which was placed under the scien- 
tific charge of Mr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys, F.R.S., accompanied by 
Mr. William L. Carpenter, as chemical assistant, commenced 
from Galway near the end of May, and concluded at Belfast 
at the beginning of July. It was directed in the first in- 
stance to the south-west, then to the west, and finally to the 
north-west as far as the Rockall Bank. The greatest depth at 
which temperature-sounding and dredging were carried on in 
this cruise was 1,476 fathoms ; and these operations, through 
the excellent equipment of the Porcupine and the skill of her 
commander, Captain Calver, were so successfully performed, 
that it was confidently anticipated that still greater depths might 
be reached with an equally satisfactory result. 
The second cruise, which was under the scientific charge of 
Prof. Wyville Thomson, F.R.S., with Mr. Hunter as chemical 
assistant, was consequently directed to the nearest point at which 
a depth of 2,500 fathoms was known to exist, viz., the northern 
extremity of the Bay of Biscay, about 250 miles to the west of 
Ushant. In this cruise temperature-sounding and dredging 
were carried down to the extraordinary depth of 2,345 fathoms, 
or nearly three miles—a depth nearly equal to the height of 
Mont Blanc, and exceeding by more than 500 fathoms that 
from which the Atlantic Cable was recovered. This sea-bed, 
on which the pressure of the superincumbent water is nearly 
three tons for every square inch, was found to support an 
abundance of animal life ; about 14 cwt. of ‘* Atlantic mud,” 
chiefly consisting of Glodigerine, having been brought up in the 
dredge, together with various types of higher animals, Echino- 
derms, Annelids, Crustaceans, and Mollusks; among them a 
new Crinoid—referable, like the 2hizocrinus, whose discovery 
by M. Sars, jun., had been the starting-point of the present 
inquiry—to the Agvocrinite type which flourished during the 
Oolitic period. 
The third cruise was under the scientific charge of the speaker, 
with Mr, P, H. Carpenter as chemical assistant ; but he had the 
great advantage of being accompanied by his colleague Prof. 
Wyville Thomson, who, as in the Zzg/és7g expedition, took the 
entire superintendence of the dredging operations. The object 
of this cruise, which commenced in the middle of August and 
terminated in the middle of September, was a more thorough 
exploration of the area between the North of Scotland and the 
Faroe Islands, which had been found in the Lightning expedition 
to afford results of peculiar interest in regard alike to the in- 
equality of temperature and to the distribution of animal life on 
the sea-bed, which here ranges between the comparatively shal- 
* A Lecture delivered at the Royal Institution. 
+ Proceedings of the Royal Institution, vol. v. p. 503. 
