18 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 
France, Germany, Italy, ete., all contributed to the krowledge 
we possess to-day regarding a Fauna, which a previous ‘genera- 
tion' never suspected could have possibly, in such abysses, have 
ever existed. Yet a new world of life has been there revealed— 
rivalling in color and brilliancy anything we ean find in tropical 
land vegetation. The members of the Geological Se-tion of the 
Hamilton Seientific Association are well aware that the naturalists 
of a past generation universally held the opinion that it was im- 
possible for Fauna to exist at certain depths indicated, owing to 
the pressure of the overlying weight of the vast body of water. 
I beg to submit for your examination a few of the most fragile 
sea shells the writer has ever seen; yet you notice from the re- 
mark on the envelope in which they are enclosed, they were 
‘brought up alive in the dredge, off Muskat, Gulf of Oman, 
from 261 fathoms. Does it not seem almost impossible to account 
_for such a fact as this? 
The next specimen submitted for consideration is a specimen 
of Rostellaria (Lamark), one of the Strombide (wing shell), 
probably R. Curta—five species are found, it is said, in the Red 
Sea, India, Borneo and China, with a range of thirty fathoms. In 
the present instance, you may notice it was brought up alive in 
‘the dredge, with the operculum in place, from 230 fathoms. 
Woodward states some seventy species have been discovered in 
a fossilized state in the cretaceous and overlying deposits. Would 
it not be rather a rash proceeding to declare that the rocks in 
which any individual fossil was found must have been deposited 
in either a deep or shallow sea? We may reasonably conelude, 
since ‘‘the Strombs’’ are animal, not vegetable, feeders, that 
Nature has amply provided for the food they require, however 
deep may be the sea bottom they inhabit. 
Since the remaining shells contained in the parcel were dead 
ones, brought up by the dredge, they convey no information re- 
garding the zone inhabited, and dead shells frequently washed 
ashore may also be carried away by currents and deposited in 
water of very great depth. The type of the Muricide is the well 
‘known ‘‘Murex tenuispina’’ Lamark (slender spine). The 
