4 EXPEDITION OF THE “ALBATROSS,” 1899-1900. 
meeres,”} has followed the same principle, and has in no way recognized 
the names which appear on the “Challenger” bathymetrical chart or the 
earlier charts of Petermann, issued in 1877, or in the charts issued by the 
U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. In order to prevent a possible future 
confusion, the Germans have deliberately created it; for Professor Supan 
objects on “ national grounds” to Sir John Murray’s proceeding of “ tagging 
the oceans as if they were Anglo-Saxon dominions,” and insists that such 
a proceeding ‘can never receive general recognition.” Professor Supan 
considers the Anglo-Saxon method “as impracticable because in the future 
it may burden the memory of the school children of the next generation.” 
If we are to have a remodelling of the oceanic bathymetrical nomenclature, 
it seems as if we were attempting it with very insufficient data, at least 
as far as the Pacific is concerned. Professor Supan himself has called 
attention to the fact that the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is far less uni- | 
form in depth than would appear from the earlier charts; and certainly 
the great blank spaces left between the lines of soundings make it suffi- 
ciently clear how tentative all our attempts to chart the depths of the 
Pacific must be for some time to come. Of course, I do not in any way. 
wish to object to a more strict limitation of the hydrographic terms pro- 
posed by Dr. Supan, many of which have naturally in the earlier days of 
deep-sea explorations been applied somewhat vaguely. In the meantime 
basins, deeps, and ridges, such as are sketched and named on the earlier 
charts, will gradually disappear as subsequent explorations show them to 
be connected; others again will be subdivided as our knowledge of the 
depths of the oceans becomes more accurate. 
No geographer has as yet attempted for land names to make such a 
sweeping reform as that proposed by the Germans. It is true that the 
great oceanic realms are common property, and have not as yet, like the 
islands scattered in the Pacific, become included in regions of English, 
French, German, or American influence. But it will appear to an Anglo- 
Saxon as natural, from a national standpoint, to adhere to his nomenclature 
as it seems important to the German, for the same reason, to adopt a differ- 
ent system. ‘To a naturalist accustomed to have such questions settled for 
1 Petermann’s Mitteil., Bd. 45, 1899, p. 177. 
