78 Anniversary Meeting. [Nov. 30, 



Manual, and Professor Adams, of King's College, the Physical. The 

 Scientific Instructions to the Naturalists and Officers were contributed by 

 the most competent persons (who, with two exceptions, were Fellows of 

 the Society) whose services the Council could obtain. The whole was 

 published in May, under the title of ' The Natural History, Geology, and 

 Physics of the Arctic Regions,' and forms, with the Scientific Instructions, 

 an octavo volume of more than eight hundred pages. 



In connexion with the Polar Expedition I have to mention the cruise 

 of H.M.S. ' Valorous,' which took out to Disco stores for the two ships. 

 On the representation of Dr. Carpenter in a letter addressed to myself, 

 an application was made by your Council to the Lords Commis- 

 sioners of the Admiralty to employ the ' Valorous ' on her return voyage 

 in making deep-sea and temperature -soundings in Davis's Straits and the 

 North Atlantic, and to grant a passage to Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys, P.E.S., 

 and an assistant, and thus take advantage of so favourable an oppor- 

 tunity for continuing in the Arctic Sea those scientific researches which he 

 had so successfully conducted in H.M.S. 'Porcupine' in 1869 and 1870. 



The application was at once granted ; and although the voyage was far 

 from prosperous, the weather having been tempestuous and the 'Valorous' 

 having been in danger a few hours through striking on a sunken rock, 

 the results have been generally satisfactory, and include many new species 

 of pelagic animals. Captain Loftus Jones and Mr. Jeffreys dredged on the 

 Greenland coast from 70° 30' N. lat. to the entrance of Davis's Straits, 

 and in the Atlantic as far as 25° 58' W. long., in depths of which the 

 greatest was 1785 fathoms; and temperature-soundings were taken at 

 eleven out of the twenty stations indicated in the Admiralty Instructions. 

 Among the valuable results obtained is the fact that the fauna of the 

 Greenland seas agrees with its land flora in being mainly Norwegian, 

 there being (with the exception of the Echinoderms) an absence of many 

 North-American forms, which, as it appears, have not been found 

 eastward of the meridian of Cape Chidley in Labrador. A remarkable 

 mollusk, previously dredged at a depth of about 1000 fathoms off the coast 

 of Portugal by the ' Porcupine,' and which, when first found in a fossil 

 state in the newer tertiaries of Sicily, was supposed to be an extinct type, 

 reappears in the deep waters of Davis's Straits ; and a Campanularia 

 was found, specifically identical with one discovered this year in 

 the opposite hemisphere, viz. in Kerguelen's Land, by Mr. Eaton, the 

 Naturalist of the Transit-of- Venus Expedition to that island. A most 

 singular sponge-like diatom, named by Dr. Dickie Synedra Jeffreysi, 

 with living Globigerince entangled in the colloid connecting-matter of its 

 frustules, was taken in the to wing-net. 



The existence of a remarkable elevation of the floor of the ocean was 

 ascertained in lat. 56° N., long 34° 42' W., where soundings of 690 

 fathoms were obtained between depths of 1450 fathoms on one side and 

 1230 fathoms on the other — an interesting fact when taken in connexion 



