CHAP, ni.] THE CRUISES OF THE 'PORCUPINE: 131 



years and work, and this last task, on wliicli he had 

 entered with keen interest, must be finished by other 

 hands. 



It will be seen that the bottom temperature of the 

 cold area, at 600 fathoms, does not differ by more 

 than two or three degrees from that of the warm 

 area, at depths beyond 1,500 fathoms. It seems, in 

 fact, as Dr. Carpenter has well pointed out, as if all 

 the extreme climatal conditions which, in the deep 

 water of the Atlantic are extended over a vertical 

 distance of two or three miles, are here compressed, 

 without greatly altering their proportions, into the 

 compass of half a mile. We have the same surface 

 super-heating and rapid fall for the first short dis- 

 tance ; the same hump on the curves, indicating the 

 presence of a layer of water heated by some other 

 cause than direct solar radiation ; the same rapid fall 

 through a ' stratum of intermixture ; ' and, finally, 

 the same long excessively slow depression through a 

 deep bottom bed of cold water nearly at a uniform 

 temperature. 



As might be anticipated, if the view be correct 

 that arctic conditions are in a broad sense con- 

 tinuous throughout the abyssal regions of the sea, a 

 large number of the inhabitants of the ' cold area ' are 

 common to the deep water off Eockall and as far south 

 as the coast of Portugal ; .but the fauna of the Fseroe 

 channel includes besides these generally distributed 

 forms, an assemblage of species — for example the 

 large crustaceans and arachnida and some of the star- 

 fishes — which are not only generally characteristic of 

 frigid conditions, but specially of that part of the 

 arctic province represented by the seas of Spitzbergen, 



K 2 



