68 NOTES ON DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS. 



I trust it is not necessary for me to explain that, in again 

 bringing this subject before the Society, my chief object has been 

 to lay before its members the interesting details of the great 

 experiment now going on as to the ocean bottom, so far as it 

 is within our reach ; and if I have drawn largely from Dr. 

 Carpenter's paper, I owe no further apology for so doing than 

 the quotation from the words of the President of the "Royal 

 Geographical Society, at the close of the reading, with which I 

 will conclude this part of my remarks. 



" The President said that, upon such papers as that which Dr. 

 Carpenter had prepared, the scientific reputation of the Royal 

 Geographical Society amongst continental nations depended. If it 

 was merely a Society to register personal adventures or the 

 ordinary run of travellers, it might be a Geographical Society, 

 but it would not be a Scientific Geographical Society. When, 

 however, serious problems of physical geography, such as Dr. 

 Carpenter had solved, were considered, the Society fulfilled those 

 functions for which it was really constituted." 



If T may apply this to ourselves, I would say that, in making 

 known to all our members, and to outsiders in the Colony at 

 large, information of the kind condensed in this paper (though 

 in one sense not strictly original), I have considered that I have 

 been carrying out part of the work for which Ave have been 

 united ; for if the researches as to the formation of Australasian 

 lands, or of the starry worlds above us, be of use in the educa- 

 tion of a people, so the wonders of the ocean, and what we can 

 learn of its depths, are equally part of the aim we have in view ; 

 and surely we ought not to exclude the sea that washes our 

 shores with its currents, offering as it does prospects of inter- 

 communication by means of its bottom, from what belongs to the 

 development of " The resources of Australia." 



III. One other brief portion remains in connection with the 

 subject before me. Many facts were cited in my Anniversary 

 Address relating to the occurrence of Globigerina ooze and the 

 tiny creatures from which that designation is taken. There are 

 many notices also of the Red clay. These were principally from 

 the observations of Professor Wyville Thomson. That distin- 

 guish naturalist has recently thrown fresh light on these subjects. 

 In a letter, dated Yeddo, 9th June, 1875, he addressed to Pro- 

 fessor Huxley some very interesting information respecting 

 living Globigerina ; and the latter gentleman has communicated 

 it to the readers of Nature in the Number of that journal for 

 19th August (vol. xii. p. 318). 



Professor Thomson, in a note recently published in the " Pro- 

 ceedings of the Royal Society," had stated that up to that time 

 he had never seen any trace of the pseudopodia of Globigerina. 



