NOTES AND QUERIES. 
161 
Fragment on Submarine Zones of Distribution. — 1. As soon as the 
main facts of the distribution of animals and plants into regions and districts, 
and into zones of elevation above the sea-level had been generally established, 
it was assumed that like limitations held good as to marine plants, and (as in- 
separable from them) to zoophytes. 
2. It was thus laid down pretty positively that the coral animals could not 
exist at certain depths ; and from these the inferences that coral formations, 
per se, could have no great thickness unless subaierged wliilst in progress by 
the sinking of the ground on which the animals had attached themselves as a 
nucleus or basis ; and if this progress were carried on slowly the said animals, 
within " regulation limits" as to depth, could continue their work upwards as 
before. 
2. In Darwin's valuable work on coral formations, p. 85, he gives certain 
tabulated data of the known depths at which corals have been found alive. The 
example most to my purpose (for I am unacquainted with " CeUepora" found 
at one hundred and ninety fathoms) Ls " Gorgonia, or an allied form," at one 
liundi-ed and sixty fathoms deep. 
4. The pressure at one hundred and sixty fathoms (taking sea-water at about 
sixty-five pounds per cubic foot) is four hundred and thirty-three pounds per 
square inch ; and who that is at aU famiUiar with the exquisite delicacy of 
structure in the polyp of gorgonia of any kind can suppose that mere internal 
counterpoise of water within to water without would render life possible in 
such types of all that is tiny, frail and fairy-Hkc ? No wood sunk to that depth 
would ever float on being drawn up to the surface : it would become " water- 
logged." Hence it is conceived that nothing but the mysterious agency of 
vitality can give the tissue its power of resisting tlie above mentioned and 
ver^ considerable penetrative pressure. TMio then is to limit the depth at 
which zoophyte life is to be found, and coral-reefs to be carried on ? 
5. Such bemg the case at one hundred and sixty fathoms, what are we to 
say to the facts given in Mr. G. E. Roberts' interesting paper — " High and 
Low Life" — in which the existence of Ophiocoma, &c., is traced to a depth of 
two miles, or eleven times the said one hundred and sixty fathoms ? 
6. It was ever to my mind an unproven verdict (or rather dictum) that laid 
down such strict analosry between the zones of distribution for terrestrial vegeta- 
tion, and their assumed correspondents as regards marine plants and animals 
(especially the latter) ; as if they were the anamorpliic reflections downwards 
of the terraced arrangement of zonal regions upwards, sho\vn on the surface of 
the sea. 
7. In earlier days I was once honoured with a slight, but " free and gentle" 
passage at arms — a sort of holme-fight — with one of our largest Oxodons, or 
Cantabnodons (we say not which ), fresh from his native fens and reeds, who 
had taken post on this sandbank position, and in spite of every logical instinct 
on the pourquoi non ? footing I presume, required me to prove a negative 
thereon. Strange to say, he was an eminent mathematician. What would he 
have said on seeing his sunderbund-hypothesis utterly dispersed by the facts of 
Dr. Wallich and Mr. Darwin ? 
8. It may be assumed, safely enough, that coral formations may spring from 
around any suitable nucleus in the very floor of the ocean ; though not by any 
means restricted from starting their characteristic contours and belts from around 
the upper portions of submarine hills — working from thence upwards as from 
an advanced base of operation.. — R. J. Nelson, R.E., Halifax, Nova Scotia. 
Skeleton of a Nondescript Animal found at Buenos Ayres. — (Vol. iv. 
p. 18). — I refer your correspondent who asks what scientific account has been 
given of the great animal preserved in the Madrid Museum, to Dr. Buckland's 
Esssay in the Bridgewater Treatise. The skeleton which is that of the Mega- 
[SUPPLEMENT TO THE " GEOLOGIST/' No. 40.] 
