MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 41 
or north, according to the direction of the prevailing current. The 
amount of food which these currents carry is small compared with that 
drifting along the course of the Gulf Stream. I was also greatly sur- 
prised at the poverty of the surface fauna. Except on one occasion, 
when during a calm we passed through a large field of floating surface 
material, we usually encountered very little. It is composed mainly of 
Salpz, Doliolum, Sagittz, and a few Siphonophores,—a striking con- 
trast to the wealth of the surface fauna to be met with on a calm 
day in the Gulf of Mexico near the Tortugas, or in the main current 
of the Gulf Stream as it sweeps by the Florida Reef or the Cuban 
coast near Havana. 
Although we often dredged in strictly characteristic Globigerina ooze 
or over bottoms containing numerous tests of Globigerinz and Orbuline, 
I was much struck with the absence of living Globigerine on the surface. 
Only on two occasions during a calm did we come across any number of 
surface Globigerinee and Orbuline. No pelagic Algz were found, yet 
they occur in great fields off the west coast of South America as far 
north as Ecuador. 
The number of new species which were constantly turning up in the 
contents of our tow-net, when hauled from 200 fathoms to the surface, 
plainly shows that no reliance can as yet be placed upon deductions 
drawn from the comparison of the contents of the nets at different local- 
ities and at varying depths. We evidently know as yet too little of 
the characteristic pelagic species living within the 250 or 300 fathom 
bathymetrical belt to enable us to state that the contents of open tow- 
nets lowered, say one to 500 fathoms and another to 1,000 fathoms, no 
matter how different they may be, are not due to the pelagic fauna living 
in the upper belt between the surface and 200 or 300 fathoms. 
I am not questioning the existence of pelagic, or rather free-swimming 
species, at a moderate distance from the bottom, nor the presence near 
shore of such animals at considerably greater depths than those to which 
the oceanic pelagic fauna extends, or at short distances from shore, where 
an archipelago may form a barrier, as do the Canaries or the West India 
Islands, to the free action of oceanic currents, and where pelagic species 
may accumulate under radically different conditions from those of ad- 
joining oceanic basins. 
Too little is as yet known of the geographical distribution of the 
oceanic pelagic surface organisms of either the Atlantic or Pacific 
Ocean.1 We know, it is true, something of their geographical distribu- 
1 See an interesting note by Chun in the Zool. Anzeiger, Nos. 214, 215, Jan- 
uary, 1886. 
