Microscopic Life in the Ocean at the South Pole, 557 



attention being paid to the study of the relations under which minute 

 organisms exist, as one likely to throw considerable light upon the 

 principal questions now agitated, involved in the recent history of the 

 earth's crust, and also to recommend that the directions given by the 

 author as to the methods of collecting them should be adopted 

 throughout the whole voyage. Through the scientific ardour of Dr. 

 J. Hooker, son of the well-known botanist, and a voyager on board 

 the ship Erebus, a variety of valuable materials were collected dur- 

 ing the expedition, and a short time back about forty packages 

 and three glasses of water were transmitted to Germany from the 

 neighbourhood of Cape Horn and Victoria Land. About the 

 same time also, Mr. Darwin, the profound observer upon the forma- 

 tion of coral reefs in the South- seas, contributed objects from other 

 localities. 



The author set about examining carefully without delay, as such 

 an opportunity might not again recur, water which had been taken 

 from the South Polar sea of from 75° to 78° 10' south latitude, and 

 ]62° west longitude, with a view of determining its relative amount 

 of minute organic life. Of the dry materials some packets only have 

 as yet been examined, those namely which from their localities 

 appear to possess the greatest interest, and among these were speci- 

 mens of the remains of melted polar ice and sea-bottom, taken 

 under south latitudes 63° and 78°, from depths of 190 to 270 fa- 

 thoms (i. e. 1140 — 1620 feet), the greatest depths that have been 

 hitherto sounded. 



The relations of minute organic life were found, as the author 

 had anticipated, to be the same at the south as at the north pole, 

 and generally of great extent and intensity at the greatest depths 

 of the ocean. 



Previous observations upon those loftiest mountains whose pin- 

 nacles are capped with eternal ice, had determined that a gradual 

 progressive disappearance of organic life takes place from the base 

 to their summit, and that too in accordance with particular laws ; 

 to the tree succeeding the lowly shrub, next grass and lichens, 

 till finally we arrive at the regions of perpetual snow where there 

 is a complete absence of all life. In like manner the development 

 of organized beings has been conceived to diminish from the equa- 



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