408 THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. 



bulate the submarine meads, or to force his way leisurely through 

 dense thickets of algae, and explore their hidden wonders. 



Yet, in spite of these natural impediments, his inventive 

 genius, fired by his insatiable avidity of knowledge, has given 

 him the means of interrogating the abyss, and partly raising the 

 veil behind which marine life conceals its secret operations. 

 Armed with a dredge, he fetches from the bottom of the sea 

 plants, polypi, mollusks, and annelides, and leams to distinguish 

 the various depths assigned for their abode ; or he puts on the 

 helmet of the submarine diver, and passes whole hours in collect- 

 ing and observing beneath the clear waters of the sea ; or he 

 drops the plummet hundreds of fathoms deep into the ocean, 

 and draws it up again coated with specimens of corals or Forami- 

 nifera. 



To the late Professor Edward Forbes of Edinburgh science 

 is indebted for the first investigations of this nature that have 

 been undertaken on a greater scale; and, to give the reader 

 some idea of the causes which regulate the distribution of marine 

 life, I cannot do better than cite a few of the general results of 

 that eminent naturalist's researches.* 



As the animals and plants of the land are grouped together 

 into distinct zoological and botanical provinces, so likewise is 

 the population of the sea gathered into geographical groups, 

 which, though well marked in their more central and most deve- 

 loped portions, imperceptibly merge at their margins into those 

 of neighbouring realms. " These submarine provinces have a 

 more or less direct correspondence with those of the neighbouring 

 lands, though sometimes they differ very considerably from thd 

 latter in their extent; since the physical features which may 

 constitute boundaries in the one, may not be sufficiently ex- 

 tended or developed in the other to impede the spread of 

 peculiar species of animals or plants. Marine creatures, owing 

 to their organisation and the transporting powers of the element 

 in which they live, are much more capable of diffusion, as a 

 whole, than the terrestrial organisms ; hence we should expect to 

 find the regions they respectively inhabit, beneath the waves, of 

 much vaster dimensions than those occupied by similar geogra- 



* Natural History of the European Seas, by the late Professor E. Forbes. Edited 

 by E. Godwin Austen, 1859. 



