464 RECENT ADVANCES IN GEOLOGY. 
the same year Sars, the Swedish naturalist, described the 
Rhizocrinus Lofotensis, obtained on the Scandinavian Coast, 
a new and living type of Crinoidea belonging to a family 
characteristic of the Oolite. The soundings, prosecuted 
under the direction of Count de Pourtales, attached to the 
United States Coast Survey, between Florida and the outer 
edge of the Gulf Stream, have yielded important results 
which have been in part reported upon by de Pourtales, the 
elder and younger Agassiz, and Lyman. 
The deep-sea dredgings prosecuted during the past year 
on board of her Britannic Majesty’s ship Porcupine, placed at 
the disposal of a scientific committee, consisting of Messrs. 
Carpenter, Jeffrys, and Thompson, have yielded results of 
the highest interest. The supposition of an Azoic zone must 
now be abandoned. The profoundest depths of the ocean, 
in which the Himalayas or the Andes might be engulfed, are 
now believed to be inhabited, and inhabited, too, by organic 
forms which, since the dawn of the Cretaceous Age, have 
undergone no considerable modification. The littoral de- 
posits, on the other hand show the most marked diversities. 
1n organic forms. In one sense, as declared by Dr. Carpen- 
ter, we are living in the Cretaceous Age; in another, since 
the close of that age we have witnessed repeated dispersions 
and modifications of organic forms. 
Dr. Wyville Thompson, generalizing on these facts, says 
that there is no direct evidence that oscillations have taken 
place in the Northern Atlantic greater than 1,500 feet since 
the commencement of the Mesozoic Period, and that the 
great depressions in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans are due 
to causes that acted before that period. : 
"There have been," he continues, "constant minor oscilla- 
tions; but the beds formed during periods of depression, but 
now exposed by an upheaval of this minor character, are com- 
paratively local and shallow-water beds, as shown by the na- 
ture and richness of their fauna." : 
The dredgings which have been made in the fresh-water 
