AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
Vol. VI.—JANUARY, 1872.—No. 1. 
LEEK HYOD 22 
CONCERNING DEEP-SEA DREDGINGS. 
BY PROF. L. AGASSIZ. * 
» 
My Dear Frrenp:—On the point of starting for the Deep-Sea 
Dredging expedition, for which you have so fully provided, and 
which I trust may prove to be. one of the best rewards for your 
devotion to the interests of the Coast Survey, I am desirous to 
leave in your hands a document which may be very compromis- 
ing for me, but which I nevertheless am determined to write in 
the hope of showing within what limits natural history has ad- 
vanced toward that point of maturity when seience may antici- 
pate the discovery of facts. 
If there is, as I believe to be the case, a plan according to 
which the affinities among animals and the order of their succes- 
sion in time were determined from the beginning, and if that 
plan is reflected in the mode of growth, and in the geographical 
distribution of all living beings; or, in other words, if this world 
of ours is the work of intelligence, and Tok, erely the product of 
force and matter, the human mind, as a part of the whole, should 
so chime with it, that, from what is known, it may reach the un- 
known; and if this be so the amount of information thus far gath- 
ered should, within the limits of errors which the imperfection of 
our knowledge renders unavoidable, be sufficient to foretell what 
*Communicated by Prof. Peirce from , sheets of Bulletin of the Museum of 
Per reales Zoology. No.3. A Letter c ng Deep-Sea Dredgings Lae ae nae 
Professor Benjamin Peirce, Superint iia Uaid States Coast Survey, b 
Pian Cambridge, Mass., December 2, 1871. 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by the PEABODY ACADEMY OF 
SCIENCE, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
AMER. NATURALIST, VOL. VI. 1 (1) 
