214 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LII. No. 1340 



Triton, under Tizard and Murray, in 1882, 

 ■while exploring the cold and warm areas of the 

 Faroe Channel separated by the Wyville-Thom- 

 son ridge, incidentally discovered the famous 

 Dubh-Artach fishing grounds, which have been 

 worked by British trawlers ever since. 



Notwithstanding all this activity during the 

 last forty years since oceanography became a 

 science, much has still to be investigated in all 

 seas in all branches of the subject. On pur- 

 suing any line of investigation one very soon 

 comes up against a wa;ll of the unknown or a 

 maze of controversy. Peculiar difficulties sur- 

 round the isubjeot. The matters investigated 

 are often remote and almost inaccessible. Un- 

 kno'wn factors may enter into every problem. 

 The samples required may be at the other end 

 of a rope or a wire eight or ten miles long, 

 and the oceanographer may have to grope for 

 them literally in the dark and under other 

 difficult conditions which make it uncertain 

 wheJther his samples when obtained are ade- 

 quate and representative, and whether they 

 have undergone any change since leaving their 

 natural environment. It is not surprising then 

 that in the progress of knowledge mistakes 

 have been made and corrected, that views have 

 been held on what seemed good scientific 

 grounds which later on were proved to be 

 erroneous. For example, Edward Forbes, in 

 his division of life in the sea into zones, on 

 what seemed to be sufficiently good observa- 

 tions in the ^gean, but which we now know 

 to be exceptional, placed the limit of life at 

 300 fathoms, while Wyville Thompson and his 

 fellow-workers on the Porcupine and Chal- 

 lenger showed that there is no azoic zone even 

 in the great abysses. 



Or, again, take the celebrated myth of 

 "Bathybius." In the 'sixties of last century 

 samples of Atlantic mud, taken when survey- 

 ing the bottom for the first telegraph cables 

 and preserved in alcohol, were found when 

 examined by Huxley, Haeekel and others to 

 contain what seemed to be an exceedingly prim- 

 itive protoplasmic organism, which was sup- 

 posed on good evidence to be widely extended 

 over the floor of the ocean. The discovery of 

 this Bathybius was said to solve the problem 



of how deep-sea animals were nourished in 

 the absence of seaweeds. Here was a wide- 

 spread protoplasmic meadow up which other 

 organisms could graze. Belief in Bathybius 

 seemed to be confirmed and established by 

 Wyville Thomson's results in the Porcupine 

 Expedition of 1869, but was exploded by the 

 naturalists in the Challenger some five years 

 later. Buchanan in his recently published 

 " Accounts Eendered " tells us how he and his 

 colleague Murray were keenly on the look-out 

 for hours at a time on all possible occasions 

 for traces of this organism, and how they 

 finally proved, in the spring of 1875 on the 

 voyage between Hong-Kong and Yokohama, 

 that the all i)ervading substance like coagu- 

 lated mucus was an amorphous precipitate of 

 sulphate of lime thrown down from the sea- 

 water in the mud on the addition of a certain 

 proportion of alcohol. He wrote to this effect 

 from Japan to Professor Crum Brown, and 

 it is in evidence that after receiving this letter 

 Crum Brown interested his friends in Edin- 

 burgh by showing them how to make Bathy- 

 bius in the chemical laboratory. Huxley at 

 the Sheffield meeting of the British Associa- 

 tion in 1879 handsomely admitted that he had 

 been mistaken, and it is said that he character- 

 ized Bathybius as " not having fulfilled the 

 promise of its youth." Will any of our present 

 oceanographic beliefs share the fate of Bathy- 

 bius in the future? Some may, but even if 

 they do they may well have been useful steps in 

 the progress of science. Although like Bathy- 

 bius they may not have fulfilled the promise of 

 their youth, yet, we may add, they will not 

 have lived in the minds of man in vain. 



Many of the phenomena we encounter in 

 oceanographic investigations are so complex, 

 are or may be affected by so many diverse fac- 

 tors, that it is difficult, if indeed possible, to 

 be sure that we are unravelling them aright 

 and that we see the real causes of what we 

 observe. 



iSome few things we know approximately — 

 nothing completely. We know that the great- 

 est depths of the ocean, about six miles, are a 

 little greater than the highest mountains on 

 land, and Sir John Murray has calculated that 



