ANDflVERSART ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. xlili 



and two miles off shore, they brought up gravel and two small live 

 crustaceans (Gammarus); in the second, in 3900 ft. and eighteen 

 mUes off shore, pebbles and brown clay, with Serpulce, corallines, 

 crustaceans, and fragments of shells ; in the third, in 6000 ft. and six 

 miles off shore, soft mud, vrith some worms in it. Again, in a sound- 

 ing where the depth was 6300 ft., a small starfish was found at- 

 tached to the line below the point marking 2400 ft. 



Mr. Alex. Fisher, in his account of the voyage of the ' Hecla ' 

 and ' Griper ' in 1819-20, states that, in a sounding taken on ap- 

 proaching Lancaster Soimd, they brought up from a depth of 

 5100 ft. mud, with small stones and pieces of broken shells of very 

 delicate texture. 



A curious case is recorded in the voyage of the French frigate 

 'Yenus,' in the Pacific, by M. de Tessan in 1838. When near 

 the Equator, a bottle full of fresh water and well corked was at- 

 tached to the sounding-line near the lead, and let down to the depth 

 of 7500 feet. The bottle came up with the cork forced in, and 

 containing a small living shell of the genus Venus. 



Sir James Eoss, in his voyage to the Southern and Antarctic Seas, 

 in 1839-43, obtained more definite results. At a depth of 1800 ft. 

 he found " corallines and many animals ;" at 1920 ft. " green mud, 

 with a fragment of starfish and coral;" while the result of a haul 

 2400 ft. deep, subsequently examined by Mr. Charles Stokes and 

 Edward Forbes, showed the presence of small corals, pieces of 

 shells, and two joints of a small fossil (?) Pentacrinite, a spine of Ci- 

 daris, portions of Echinus, a small broken Cerithkim, a fragment of 

 Cleodora, and specimens of Spirorhis on some stones. "With these 

 there were Foraminifera of the genera Textularia, Nodosaria, and 

 some others, in abundance. 



That the specimens brought up on these occasions were generally 

 fragmentary was almost to be expected. 



"With the application of the dredge to the purposes of deep-sea 

 exploration, materials for a more exact classification of species ac- 

 cording to their bathymetrical range rapidly accumulated ; and in 

 the year 1839 a Committee of the British Association was appointed 

 to carry out a systematic investigation of the seas of the British 

 coasts. In 1840, Prof. E. Forbes, then about to join the surveying- 

 ship ' Beacon ' as naturalist, was requested by the Association to 

 furnish them with a report on the MoUusca and Eadiata inhabiting 

 the ^gean Sea. This report * marks an epoch m Natural History 



and Geology. 



* Brit. Assoc. Eeports for 1843, p. 173. 



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