Recent Researches of Professor Agassiz. 295 



the necessity for them is obvious. It is not necessary, he 

 remarks, that these currents, as in other parts, should occupy 

 the surface, and probably also the bottom of one of the sides 

 of the basins whose waters require to be renewed, as the 

 Gulf Stream occupies the east side of the North Atlantic. It 

 is plain that the cold and hot waters of two regions can be 

 exchanged by the latter passing underneath the former ; and 

 although the Arctic current from the Greenland Sea does 

 not contain much ice to the southward of Cape Farewell, it 

 is more than probable its chilly waters pass over a fork of 

 the Gulf Stream, which ultimately sweeps along the shores 

 of West Greenland. — {Proceedings of the Royal Society of 

 London?) 



Recent Researches of Professor Agassiz. 



Prof. Agassiz has recently made a rapid tour from Charles- 

 town, South Carolina, through Alabama, Mississippi, and 

 Louisiana, thence up the Mississippi to St Louis, Chicago, 

 and along by the great lakes to New York and Massachusetts. 

 In a recent letter from him, addressed to J. T>. Dana, dated 

 Cambridge, 9th June, he mentions the following as some of 

 of the results of his tour. 



" I have been successful in collecting specimens, especially 

 fishes, of which I have brought home not less than sixty new 

 species, mostly from the great southern and western rivers. 

 Some of these are particularly interesting. I would mention 

 foremost a new genus, which I shall call Chologaster, very 

 similar in general appearance to the blind fish of the Mam- 

 moth Cave, though provided with eyes ; it has, like Am- 

 blyopsis, the anal aperture far advanced under the throat, 

 but is entirely deprived of ventral fins ; a very strange and 

 unexpected combination of characters. I know but one 

 species, Ch. comntus, Ag. It is a small fish, scarcely three 

 inches long, living in the ditches of the rice fields in South 

 Carolina. I derive its specific name from the singular form 

 of the snout, which has two hornlike projections above. 



The family of Cyprinodonts has received the most nume- 

 rous additions, and among them there are again new com- 



