SUBMARINE DEPOSITS. 291 
While dredging to the leeward of the Caribbean Islands, we 
could not fail to notice the large accumulations of vegetable 
matter and of land débris brought up from deep water many 
miles from the shore. It was not an uncommon thing to find 
at a depth of over one thousand fathoms, ten or fifteen miles 
from land, masses of leaves, pieces of bamboo and of sugar- 
cane, dead land shells, and other land débris, undoubtedly 
blown out to sea by the prevailing tradewinds. We frequently 
found floating on the surface masses of vegetation, more or less 
water-logged, and ready to sink. The contents of some of our 
trawls would certainly have puzzled a paleontologist ; between 
the deep-water forms of crustacea, annelids, fishes, echinoderms, 
sponges, etc., and the mango and orange leaves mingled with 
branches of bamboo, nutmeg, and land shells, both animal and 
vegetable forms being in great profusion, he would have found 
it difficult to decide whether he had to deal with a marine or a 
land fauna. Such a haul from some fossil deposit would natu- 
rally be explained as representing a shallow estuary surrounded 
by forests, and yet the depth might have been fifteen hundred 
fathoms. This large amount of vegetable matter, thus carried 
out to sea, seems to have a material effect in increasing, in cer- 
tain localities, the number of marine forms. 
We can thus see the method by which land shells, small sau- 
rians, and insects of all sorts, may readily be transported from 
island to island, and we might possibly trace the actual path 
taken by the immigrants into the Lesser and Greater Antilles 
from the northern parts of South America. 
We made three casts off the coast of Cuba, between Nuevitas 
and Cape Maysi. In Lat. 21° 2’ N., Long. 74° 44’ W., off Cayo 
de Moa, in 1,554 fathoms, we found a patch of greensand, made 
up of large globigerinz, similar to that mentioned by Pour- 
talés in his “ Deep-Sea Corals.” We also obtained, in 994 
fathoms off Nuevitas, large blocks of genuine white chalk, com- 
posed mainly of globigerine and pulvinuline. Large quanti- 
ties of ooze and white clay, which proved to be only the white 
chalk in different stages of compression, also came up in the 
trawl. If the conditions now existing at that depth at all re- 
semble those of the time of the white chalk, I ean readily un- 
