Surface Fauna of the Bay of Fundy. 607 
The two great tendencies at work in the modification, as in the 
geographical distribution, of pelagic animals, are cold currents of 
water bringing them into lower and warm currents transporting 
them into higher latitudes.! The physical result in both instances 
is a change in the temperature of the water and other conditions in 
which they live. Where the currents generally set from the south 
to the north, as on the eastern coasts of the Northern Hemisphere, 
we may expect a relationship to the tropics in higher latitudes than 
where the currents are from the pole. The former currents carry 
the warm belt into higher, while the latter restrict it to the lower 
latitudes. It is known that the distribution of coral reefs on the 
western and eastern coasts of the continents has a direct relation- 
ship to the direction of the ocean currents, and that where the 
current is from the equator to higher latitudes (Eastern coasts) 
coral reefs extend farther from the equator than where the general 
direction of the oceanic rivers is from colder to warmer latitudes? 
This can readily be seen by consulting a map of the earth’s surface 
where all the great coral reefs are on the eastern side of the con- 
tinents, and where also all the great oceanic currents are setting from 
the equator towards the poles, 
This law in the distribution of corals, pointed out by Dana, is 
believed to hold also in the case of other animals, which, unlike 
corals in their mode of life, are not fixed, and have left no hard 
secretions to denote their former or present existence. 
It will be seen by a consultation of Kriimmel’s maps of the 
distribution of surface temperatures in the Atlantic, and by a 
reference to the chart of the surface temperatures published in 
Science for December, 1887, that the Bay of Fundy does not lie in 
the same isothermal zone as do the waters of the coast of Greenland. 
Perhaps these zones were only intended as approximations, and the 
temperature of the water of the Bay of Fundy may not be higher 
than of that of the coast of Newfoundland. In the chart referred 
to, the Bay of Fundy is near the southern limit of the zone of low 
surface temperature, and the high tides may account for the large 
percentage of boreal surface animals in its waters. 
aipa — life washed to the coast of England will probably be 
pate - from that of Labrador under the same latitude. 
i y due also to the food of the coral, minute floating life, which 
18 furnished in greater abundance on account of the currents. 
