SEALS AND WHALES OF THE BRLTLSH SEAS. 97 



animals, those which require a bottom on which to deposit their spawn ; but 

 there are many which do not require this. The spawn of some floats about 

 unattached ; for otliers a frond of weed is sufficient attaclinient ; and it has 

 occurred to me that tlie distribution of the Sperm Whale may in some way 

 be connected with the geological antecedents of the ocean it inhabits. I 

 think it not improbable that the site of a submerged land m ly swarm with 

 life, which originally proceeded, or was dependent on it, long after it had been 

 in the deep bosom of the ocean buried. The Sargasso seas, which swarm 

 with Eolidce and Crustacea, are examples of this life ; it is not invariably 

 either present or absent in deep water, and it is its presence or its absence 

 which is instructive. Those animals which required a bottom to spawn upon 

 may have died out or been developed into others which do not ; and those 

 which do not require such a support may have multiplied correspondingly. 

 In one of the maps in Lieutenant Maury's book, already cited, there is a 

 space of sea opposite the western coast of South America, and lying between 

 Patagonia and New Zealand, marked ' Desolate region, distinguished by the 

 absence of animal or vegetable life ' ; — no Sperm Whales here — nothing for 

 them to feed upon — and no symptoms, either by banks of Sargasso or coral 

 islets, of any land ever having existed there. There is no apparent reason 

 why this place, except from some special cause peculiar to itself, should be 

 more desolate than any other in the same latitude — than the deep sea on the 

 east side of Patagonia, for example. I can imagine that, if the bottom of the 

 sea should subside gradually, where animal life had once abounded, animal 

 life — not that animal life, but animal life due in some way to it — might 

 continue to linger over it long after it had passed bej'ond the depth at which 

 it could practically have any effect upon the animal life above it ; but if a 

 part of the circumference of the globe has always been under water, before 

 and ever since the creation of life, no life is likely to be found on that spot, 

 because it has never had a starting-point of life from v/hich to begin ; and, 



