182 General Notes. [February, 
the Transactions of the Vienna Academy of Science an essay on 
the polymorphism of an Aphis (Chaetophorus populi). A new 
cave-spider, says Science-Gossip for December, has been found in 
a cave in Tasmania, the female of which measures six and a half 
inches from tip to tip of the fore and hind legs———Sharp has 
detected on the prothoracic stigma of the beetle (Chalcolepidius) 
trap-door- like lobes closing them so as to prevent the entrance of 
small mites (Proc. Ent. Soc. London, p. iii). 
ZOOLOGY. 
THE DEEP-SEA EXPLORATIONS OF THE “ TALISMAN” (continued). 
—The Sargasso sea was then visited, and deep-sea soundings 
made to ascertain the nature of the bed of that part of the ocean. 
From Cape Verde, the ocean gradually deepens toward the 25th 
parallel, when it attains a depth of 6267 meters; but it gradually 
rises toward the Azores, and, under the 35th parallel, it is not 
over 3175 meters deep. These results are far from being in 
accord with the indications on the charts of the Atlantic ocean 
recently published, where the curves of depth give very consid- 
erable inequalities. 
Whenever soundings were made, specimens ofa very fine ooze, 
formed of fine particles of pumice, mixed with globigerina, 
were brought up. This ooze, at first reddish near the Cape 
Verde islands, afterward became of an almost pure white. Each 
time the dredge furrowed the face of the sea-bottom, it was more 
or less filled with fragments of pumice stonea nd of volcanic rocks. 
It would seem as if there were, more than a league under the sea, 
a great chain of volcanoes parallel to the African coast, and of 
which the Cape Verde islands, the Madeiras, the Canaries and 
the Azores were the only points of emergence. : 
The submarine fauna there is scanty. To the stones were 
attached brachiopods (Discina atlantica). A blind Fusus (Fusus 
abyssorum), and a new genus of Lamellibranchs (Pygotheca fra- 
gilis), as well as several Pleurotoma, occurred. Some Crustacea, 
such as hermit crabs (Pagurus pilimanus), which lodge in colonies 
of Epizoanthus, and which have already been dredged on the 
African coast, some amphipods of the genus Nematocarcinus, 
Holothurians of the group of Elpidia, of which one species was 
new, Asterians, Ophiurans, and rare corals, scarcely indemnified 
e party for the time given to dredging at such great depths. 
It was only toward the north limits of the Sargasso sea, neat 
the Azores, where the depths are 3000, 2500 and 1400 meters, 
_ that our collections became abundant. The 11th of August, at 
2900 meters, the tog party captured the giant of 
— Me family of Schizopodes—a Gnathophausia, of a blood-red, 
T Eoo almost 0.25 millimeters in length, and meriting well 
the specific name of Goliath, which has been applied to it. In 
