KERGUELEN ISLAND. 285 
dorsata, Gm., and one to the Australian region, Rhynchonella nigricans, 
var. pyxidata, Wats. 
* Of the Mollusca of the deeper waters, besides those already alluded 
to, we may mention the peculiar and beautiful Volute, Provocator 
pulcher, Wats., and, among the Lamellibranchs, Davila, known also 
only from St. Paul and Amsterdam. The only known cuttlefish is a 
species of Octopus. The fishes are sufficiently dealt with in the 
preceding description of the shore. 
The foregoing is a very brief epitome of our knowledge of the 
fauna of the shore and neighbouring waters of a sub-Antarctic island. 
Already there is material at hand for a great extension of such 
knowledge when the abundant collections that have been of late 
brought home shall have been examined and reported on. But, 
however rich the collections—for instance of the Valdivia and Belgica 
—may prove to be, there is yet ample need of further exploration 
both in the same seas and in the unexplored seas beyond. For, in 
the first place, it is plain that a comparatively low temperature is 
no check to the existence of marine life, and that, as in the Arctic 
seas, so here in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic regions, we have not 
a poverty-stricken fauna, but one of great abundance and diversity. 
And while we can bring no large harvest of new species from any 
locality whatsoever that is not of value, to fill in for us, as it were, 
more and more of the scheme of changes and permutations of organic 
forms, we have furthermore in this case special problems of dis- 
tribution to solve, for whose solution much more than a superficial 
knowledge of the Antarctic fauna is likely to be required. 
The uninterrupted circle of the Southern circumpolar seas mani- 
festly contains, as it is very natural it should do, a common fauna: 
many characteristic genera and species are known, and many more 
will yet be found, to be common to widely distant parts of the 
region that includes Patagonia, the Falklands, South Georgia, Ker- 
guelen, Australasia, and the islands southward thereof; just as the 
circum-arctic seas have their common fauna, blended on one side or 
other with alien elements. Apart from any preconceived theories 
as to the nature of the Antarctic fauna, it is obviously a fauna 
of the highest interest in relation to our own, and to the Arctic 
fauna allied to our own, in order that we may compare the two great 
marine faunas that exist under similar conditions of temperature 
while they are widely separated from one another by temperature 
and depth of sea. A certain superficial resemblance of a negative 
kind is at once given to these two faunas by the absence of the charac- 
