50 
REVIEWS. 
THE CHALLENGERS VOYAGE* 
I N this handsome quarto volume we have the first instalment of the final 
report on the results of the great exploring voyage of the Challenger , 
and if the rest of the work answers to the sample, the country, and 
especially British naturalists, will have every reason to he satisfied with 
the outcome of this expedition. In the Provisional Preface to this first 
volume, Sir Wyville Thomson explains generally the plan of publication 
that is being adopted ; and it seems excellently calculated to place the scien- 
tific results of the voyage in a convenient form in the hands of the public. 
These results naturally divide themselves into two series. One of these 
consists of the hydrographical details, and magnetic, meteorological, and 
other physical observations which naturally fell to the lot of the Naval 
Surveying Staff ; and their reports, with the addition of Mr. Buchanan’s 
investigations of the specific gravity of sea-water at various depths and under 
various conditions, will occupy two volumes of the series. The complete 
report is estimated to form fourteen or fifteen volumes, similar to the one 
now before us, so that twelve or thirteen volumes are left for the record of 
the doings of the Scientific staff. One of these is to be given up to the inves- 
tigation of the recent deposits on the bed of the ocean and their bearing an 
Geology and Petrology, by Mr. John Murray and the Abbe Renard ; and 
another, which is to be the final one of the series, to a discussion of the 
general chemical and physical results of the expedition ; the zoologists to whom 
the collections made during the voyage have been confided will thus have ten 
or a dozen stout quartos in which to disport themselves, and enormous as the 
mass of specimens undoubtedly must be, we cannot help feeling that they 
ought to have room enough. 
The Zoological contributions will make, according to Sir Wyville Thom- 
son’s statement, about fifty separate memoirs, and the mode of publication to 
be adopted is somewhat as follows : — Each memoir and its plates will be 
paged and numbered separately, and as soon as a sufficient number of memoirs 
* Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H. M. S. Challenger , 
during the years 1873-76, under the command of Captain George Nares, R.N . , 
F.R.S., and Captain Frank Turle Thomson, R.N. Prepared under the super- 
intendence of Sir C. Wyville Thomson, Knt., F.R.S., &c. 1 Zoology,’ Vol. I. 
Published by order of Her Majesty’s Government. 4to. London, 1880, 
