president's address. 201 



one's thoughts to dwell on all the analogous cases, we should not 

 reckon them by scores but by hundreds ; and so we must bid 

 adieu to the plants of the field and the flowers of the forest and 

 turn to the mighty ocean. 



" There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 

 There is a raptiu'e on the lonelj' shore, 

 There is society, where none intrudes, 

 By the deep sea, and music in its roar : 

 I love not man the less, but Nature more." 



. The mysteries of the depths of the- ocean have, of late years, 

 been revealed to a very great extent by the researches made by 

 the officers of the "Challenger" and other like expeditions. The 

 magnificent volumes, which are being issued at distant inter- 

 vals, giving the results of the observations of the " Challenger" 

 naturalists, will when completed, form an unequalled monument 

 at once of patient labour and accurate research. 



Years ago Dr. Carpenter very pertinently remarked that "the 

 foundation of the whole of geological science, that is the inter- 

 pretation of the phenomena presented to us in the study of the 

 earth's crust, must be based upon the study of the changes at 

 present going on upon the surface of the earth, including, of 

 course, the depths of the sea." But true as this has been ever 

 since geology became a science, still it is only in very recent 

 times that it has been possible to investigate, with any approach 

 to accuracy, any but the shallower seas. 



It is to submarine telegraphy that we owe the first systematic 

 attempts at deep-sea soundings. It was obviously necessary, for 

 the purpose of laying the cable which first, as by a thin line, 

 united Europe with the continent of America, to ascertain be- 

 forehand the depths of the ocean, and also the nature of its bot- 

 tom. Commander Dayman'^ expedition in 1857 may justly be 

 considered as the pioneer of all subsequent explorations. 



It would be altogether out of place, in a brief address like the 

 present, to enter more fully into the history of the investiga- 

 tions carried on by Sir Wyville Thomson, Count Pourtales, the 

 Swedish Spitzbergen expedition, and others. Before these ob- 

 servations were made it was a commonly received belief that the 



