ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Ixxxix 
The marine creatures mentioned as obtained from the depth of 6000 
feet were within the range of uniform temperature (39°:5), and there- 
fore would not be exposed to any change in that respect. 
The existence of live corals and molluscs at these depths in the 
cold regions of the globe, beyond the range where life based on the 
consumption of terrestrial plants is found, has a geological bearing of 
much value, since we might infer that no part of the sea-bottom, 
viewing the subject as a whole, is deprived of animal life. It might 
as well extend to the south pole as to the latitude of the seas visited 
off Victoria Land, if the depths be not so considerable as to interfere 
- with its existence. by a pressure too great, or by an absence of vege- 
table food upon which the-marine life is based. 
While corals abstract carbonate of lime from the sources around, 
and add, after death, to the sea-bottom by the accumulation of their 
harder and calcareous parts, a multitude of infusoria obtain and 
accumulate silica in the same manner. They not only appear to 
swarm in the muddy bottoms off Victoria Land, but were also seen 
in such numbers on the pack ice itself as to stain it of a yellowish 
tint. Thus in these remote and desolate regions, as regards terres- 
trial vegetation and the animal life feeding upon it, where the ordi- 
nary decomposing and degrading effects of atmospheric influences are 
checked, and to a certain extent unfelt, no running waters conveying 
detritus or saline solutions to the sea, we find marine animal life busy 
in obtaining and leaving solid carbonate of lime and silica. So that 
the forms given to these substances mingling with the inorganic mat- 
ter otherwise accumulating, here, as elsewhere in the temperate and 
tropical regions, records are preserved of the life now existing on the 
face of the globe. 
Among the islands visited during this voyage, a stay was made 
at Kerguelen’s Land, sufficiently long to permit a slight insight 
into its geological structure. Though, like so many of the ocean 
islands, it presents us with igneous products, we here find detrital 
matter mingled with them, with coal also and fossil wood. Mr. 
M‘Cormick describes basalt, columnar and horizontal, amygda- 
loidal rocks, greenstones and porphyries, as also slates termed 
arenaceous, with veins of basalt and hornstone traversmg the 
igneous rocks. We seem to have the latter so mingled with de- 
trital matter as to show that the mass of the island may have been 
elevated since the accumulations were effected, volcanic ashes having 
assisted in forming with the ordinary detritus from greenstones, 
porphyries or other igneous rocks, the sedimentary deposits pointed 
out. However this may be, we have coal and fossil wood in a loca- 
lity where now the most scanty vegetation is alone found, leading Dr. 
Hooker, who accompanied the expedition, to remark, that the con- 
ditions for the growth of plants must have been far more favourable 
than at present prior to the entombment of the vegetation forming 
the coal and the fossil trees (one of which, dug out at Christmas 
Harbour, was seven feet in circumference). The coal of the same 
harbour was in a horizontal bed, four feet thick, requiring no small 
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