THE HAUNTS OF LIFE 87 



predominate in some places and of siliceous organisms in 

 others, and the debris called ' red clay ' is found in the 

 deepest parts of all. But otherwise monotony prevails. 

 There is no scenery, except that here and there a ridge 

 stretches like a watershed, or a volcanic cone rises abruptly 

 to the surface, or a great depression leads into one of the 

 ' deeps'. Otherwise there are great stretches of undulating 

 plain, Uke very flat sand-dunes, or like a great desert. 

 There is no sound and echo, no day and night, no summer 

 and winter in the monotonous Deep Sea. It is all silence, 

 all night, all winter. Apart from the animals altogether, 

 what a remarkable picture rises in the mind — a, picture of 

 the forever unseen — a strange, dark, cold, calm, silent, 

 monotonous world! 



Biological Conditions 



{a) The first big fact, the establishment of which we owe 

 to the Challenger expedition, is that there is practically no 

 depth-limit to the distribution of animal life. Wherever 

 the long arm of the dredge has been able to reach, there 

 are organisms and plenty of them. It is astonishing to 

 read of Sir John Murray and Dr. Hjort using an otter 

 trawl, with fifty feet of spread, at a depth of 2,820 fathoms 

 (over three miles), and using it very successfully. It 

 should be noticed that there are some thinly peopled 

 areas — sea-floor deserts, so to speak ; that there is a richer 

 population at the more moderate depths; that there are 

 more animals on the calcareous ooze than elsewhere; and 

 that there are probably thinly-peopled zones between the 

 bottom and the light-limit. But the big fact is that there 

 is no ' deep ' too deep for hfe. 



