
108 NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 
of 1039 Fahr. by the heat of the bird, fills E quills, hollow bones and 
cavities of the body, and buoys it up. Shoot a hawk or buzzard while 
sailing, and down he tumbles from his airy iei Does his body cool as 
soon as that? 
Not one of'these suggestions seems to be sufficient. Do they when 
combined? , Will you please enlighten us?—Joun D. Parker, Topeka, 
Kansas. 
Drep-sEA DREDGING NORTH OF ScorLAND — Drs. W. B. Carpenter and 
rane to the Farce banks has “obtained evidence of the existence, 
of a degraded or starved out E. of animal life, but of a ri 
me varied fauna, including elevated as well as humble types, at a depth 
of 530 fathoms.” ‘* Their heres tere have conclusively established the 
existence of a temperature as low as over a considerable area of sea 
bottom, where the depth was 500 fathoms and upwards, notwithstanding 
that the surface-temperature varied little from 529." They argue at 
there is a stratum of sea water with a temperature of 32°, or even 28°, 
and the existence of such strata even in equatorial regions, has been 
regarded by high scientific authorities as proving the existence of deep 
currents, bringing cold water from polar regions to replace the warmer 
the equatorial er the polar regions, as well as to make good the 
immense loss which is ges Pe usn place by evaporation from thé —— 
surface of sitis seas." “The examination which Prof. Huxley has 
our last dredging at the depth of 650 fathoms, has afforded him a remark- 
able confirmation of the conclusion he announced at the recent meeting 
of the British Association, that the Coccoliths and Coccospheres are em- 
bedded in a living expanse of protoplasmic substance, to which they bear A 
the same relation as the spicules L sponges or of Radiolaria do to the 
soft parts of those animals. Thus it would seem that the whole mass of 
ud is penetrated by a living orgs of a type even lower, because — 
less definite, than that of sponges and Rhizopods; and to this organism 
Prof. Huxley has given the name of (suni dan This calcareous mu 
composed partly of these bodies and partly of living Globigerine, has 
been compared to the great chalk formation, and the reporters thus com- 
pare the animals found living in it with the marine fauna of the Crete ‘a 
ceous period : — de 
“Among Mollusca we have two Terebratulids, of which one at least (Terebratulina caput- 

serpentis) may 




cranium) may b ded fr another of the nin 
types of that family s so. abundant in the Chalk. "Among Beh a dred we tare Cae nlc AI 
erinus. th tribe, which flourished in the Oolitic period, and 
which was until lately supposed to have had its last representative in the Bourgetticrinus of 
the Chalk. Among zoophytes, the Oculina we met with i a living state seems generically 
allied to a Cretaceous type (0. explanata of Michelin), and t the remarkab wegedaem em | 
sponges, whieh not gt aa that - 
enters largely into ee een es calcareous mud wherein they are © embeds 1s 
pre-eminently « 


(Wabliheimid —— 

