Xlii PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETT. 



annually increasing. Many of them publish Proceedings of consider- 

 able merit ; and others tend, by field-work, to spread a taste for 

 your science. 



Deep-sea Life and its Relations to Geology. 



Among the collateral subjects which have engaged much at- 

 tention during the past year, and which must exercise a consider- 

 able influence on future geological speculation, is that relating to 

 the nature of the sea-bed, the temperature of the sea at great 

 depths, and the range and distribution of animal life in those depths — 

 investigations which have been so greatly promoted by the recent ex- 

 peditions of H. M. surveying-steamers ' Lightning ' and ' Porcupine.' 

 Subjects of this nature have always been of much importance to 

 the geologist, who has therefore ever followed with the keenest in- 

 terest the researches of the naturalist and physicist. In studying 

 the marine Invertebrata the early naturahsts were long limited in 

 their observations to the shore-line, and to such moderate depths as 

 were within reach of the ordinary fishermen or their own small ap- 

 pliances. Now and then a deep-sea sounding would give a frag- 

 mentary insight into other zones of depth; but from their excep- 

 tional character they did not attract much notice. Lamarck, 0. E. 

 Miiller, Montagu, Poli, and Risso furnished some facts relating to 

 depth as well as to geographical distribution ; but still, when we 

 look to the short table by Mr. Broderip of the " Situations and Depths 

 at which recent Genera of Marine and Estuaiy Shells have been 

 observed," appended to Sir Henry de la Beche's ' Theoretical Geo- 

 logy,' it shows how scanty our information was so late as the year 

 1834. No Mollusca are there given from a depth greater than 

 420 feet, and no Brachiopoda from one greater than 540 feet. 



In the various inquiries which engaged the attention of the emi- 

 nent men who formed part of the many Arctic expeditions, that 

 of the distribution of life in the sea was not lost sight of, although, 

 from the imperfection of the means, the results were very scanty. 

 The small quantity of mud or stones attached to the sounding- 

 apparatus, or brought up by the deep-sea clam, furnished, in fact, 

 all the glimpses they were able to obtain of the ocean-bottom. 

 Although the specimens were often crushed and broken, still the 

 evidence, so far as it went, was in many cases clear and defiinite. 



Sir John Ross records, in his voyage to Baffin's Bay in 1817— 

 18, three deep-sea soundings. In the first, at a depth of 2700 ft. *, 



* I have in all cases expressed the sea-depth in feet instead of in fathoms, 

 in order to conform with the terms applied to eleyations on the surface and 

 dimensions of strata. 



