1885.] A Brief Biography of the Halibut. 953 
varied in their powers, and his mind responsive to a greater vari- 
ety of impressions. 
It is in his ideas, however, that civilized man so greatly over- 
tops the lower world of life. His mind has been for ages pushing 
deeper and deeper into the realm of the unknown like an eating 
sea that is cutting its way steadily into the land. Before it lies 
the unknown, stretching away into the infinite. Behind it lies 
the known, half or wholly buried beneath the shrouding waters 
of the sea. The surf line is the line of consciousness, the border 
between the known and the unknown. Here consciousness mines 
forever into the coast line of facts, letting every new-gained fact 
float out to come to rest on the quiet sea bottom, the stores of 
recent memory lying half visible in the shallow waters, while in 
the deep sea beyond lie the layers of ancient acquirement which 
have become to us hereditary capabilities, the native stuff of 
the mind. What new and deeper powers the senses may yet 
attain, what new susceptibility the mind, cannot be said. We see 
rising dimly and shapelessly around us new phenomena, new stuff 
for thought on which the mind of future man must work, and ‘ 
every new age may safely say to the ages of the past: “ There 
are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed 
of in your philosophy.” 
ey" 
VU. 
A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF THE HALIBUT. 
BY G. BROWN GOODE. 
ee halibut, Hippoglossus vulgaris, is widely distributed 
through the North Atlantic and North Pacific, near the 
_ Shores, in shallow water, as well as upon the offshore banks and 
the edges of the continental slope down to the depth of at least 
400 fathoms. The species has not been observed in the West- 
. ern Atlantic south of the fortieth parallel; stragglers have 
Occasionally been taken off Sandy Hook, Block island and 
Montauk point. It ranges north at least to Cumberland gulf, 
latitude 64°, to Holsteinborg bank in Davis’ strait, and as far 
as Disko and Omenak fiord, latitude 71°, on the coast of Green- 
land, five or six degrees within the Arctic circle. It occurs 
along the entire west coast of Greenland, and is abundant about * 
Iceland and at Spitzbergen, in latitude 80°. No one knows 
_ to what extent it ranges along the European and Asiatic shores 
