HISTORY OF THE CRETACEOUS FLINTS. 87 



grounds for believing that the spot at which the sounding was 

 taken is a rocky one, and swept clear of any deposit by a current 

 setting nearly due south from Jan Meyen, and, as will be seen on 

 reference to any chart, flowing down in nearly a direct line to the 

 channel between Eockall and the Irish coast. Yet, in the ' Pro- 

 ceedings of the Eoyal Society' (for Nov. 1869), the statement is 

 put forward by Dr. Carpenter that, " save in the narroiu cliannel 

 of 682 fathoms, there is no depth greater than 300 fathoms along the 

 whole of the bottom (from the Faroes to Iceland), and an effectual 

 barrier is thus interposed to any current moving southwards at a 

 depth exceeding this"*. Whilst in the 'Proceedings' for Juno 

 1872 1 this extraordinary assertion is repeated in a still more mis- 

 leading fashion ; for here Dr. Carpenter says, " In my Report for 

 1869, Ip)ointed out that the comparative shallowness of the bottom 

 between Iceland and the Faroe Islands luould interpose an effectual 

 barrier to any glacial current moving southward at a depth exceeding 

 300 fathoms,'^ — the result of these misstatements being that, in the 

 chart appended to Sir Wyville Thomson's ^ Depths of the Sea,' in the 

 chart appended to Captain Davis's paper " On the Course of the 

 'Valorous'" in 1874 (published in the 'Geographical Magazine' 

 for October 1875), and in the chart appended to Captain Markham's 

 'Threshold of the Unknown Eegion' (published in the same year), 

 the 680-fathom channel is altogether omitted, the greatest depth 

 recorded in these charts between Iceland and the Faroes, being in 

 the former 500 fathoms, and in the two latter only 250 fathoms ! 

 So far, moreover, from its being a fact that there is no depth 

 greater than 300 fathoms, I may mention that in the two soundings, 

 taken respectively at a distance of fifteen miles to the eastward and 

 westward of the 680-fathom bottom, the depths discovered were 

 350 and 368 fathoms. As I had the honour of presenting Dr. Car- 

 penter, in 1862, with a copy of my work, in which there is a chart 

 settmg forth all these particulars, I am somewhat at a loss to con- 

 ceive how he could have committed such an error. Indeed it is 

 impossible to explain it on any other supposition than that this 

 author's well-known scientific ardour caused him to remain blind 

 to the fact that the presence of the 680-fathom bottom in this 

 region was fatal to the theory he was at the time propounding 

 with reference to the deep oceanic circulation of this particular 

 region. On the other hand, it is but an act of justice to those who 

 superintended the soundings on board the 'Bulldog' in 1860, to 

 state that these could not have been more ably conducted or more 

 thoroughly trustworthy in every respect. 



Bearing in mind, then, the various circumstances now referred 

 to, I think we are fully justified in concluding that, for the pur- 

 poses of exact analysis and comparison (such analysis as can alone 

 be of service to the geologist), the whole of the methods heretofore 

 employed for obtaining an insight into the precise lithological com- 

 position of the rock-materiai now forming at the bed of the ocean 



* Proc. Eoy. Soc. for November 1869, vol. xviii. No. 121, p. 464. 

 t Proc. Eoy. Soc., June 1872, vol. xx. No. 138, p. 591. 



