MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. 37 



a deep sea. coral, attached to the broken cable at a depth 

 greater than 1,000 fathoms, and therefore much beyond the 

 supposed zero of Edward Forbes. During the " Lightning " 

 and " Porcupine " expeditions, 16 hauls of the dredge were 

 taken at depths beyond 1,000 fathoms, and two in depths 

 greater than 2,000 fathoms, and in all cases life was found 

 to be abundant. 



Let us quote here Wyville Thomson's account of a remark- 

 able discovery made by one of these hauls, viz., that of the 

 first living representative of the fossil flexible sea-urchins 

 of the Chalk ever seen by a scientific man (p. 155) : — 



" This haul was not very rich, but it yielded one specimen 

 of extraordinary beauty and interest. As the dredge was 

 coming in we got a glimpse from time to time of a large scarlet 

 urchin in the bag. We thought it was one of the highly- coloured 

 forms of Echinus flemingii of unusual size, and as it was blowing- 

 fresh and there was some little difficulty in getting the dredge 

 capsized, we gave little heed to what seemed to be an inevitable 

 necessity — that it should be crushed to pieces. We were some- 

 what surprised, therefore, when it rolled out of the bag 

 uninjured ; and our surprise increased, and was certainly 

 in my case mingled with a certain amount of nervousness, 

 when it settled down quietly in the form of a round red cake, 

 and began to pant— a line of conduct, to say the least of it, 

 very unusual in its rigid undemonstrative order. Yet there 

 it was with all the ordinary characters of a sea-urchin, its 

 inter-ambulacral areas, and its ambulacral areas with their 

 rows of tube feet, its spines, and five sharp blue teeth ; and 

 curious undulations were passing through its perfectly flexible 

 leather-like test. I had to summon up some resolution before 

 taking the weird little monster in my hand, and congratulating 

 myself on the most interesting addition to my favourite 

 family which had been made for many a day."* 



* Wyville Thomson gave a detailed description of this and the other 

 new Echinoidea obtained on the " Porcupine " Expeditions in his Memoir^ 

 published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1874. 



