84 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
The Fakoi 
Channel. 
Zkko or Lire in 
tii« Ocean. 
spcoies would Ik; found there. These rational conclusions received some support from 
Fori -os’ brilliant researches, and have been partially confirmed by recent investigations. 1 
Forbes’ name is inseparably associated with the bathymetrical distribution of marine 
life, and his clearly-defined zones — the Littoral, Lamiuarian, Coralline, and the Region 
of the Deep-Sea Corals — enormously facilitated the work of descriptive naturalists. 
The region of deep-sea corals extended from 50 fathoms to an unknown depth, and 
Forbes points out that vegetable life is entirely absent from it, and “ as we descend 
deeper and deeper in this region, the inhabitants become more and more modified, 
and fewer and fewer, indicating our approach towards an abyss where life is either 
extinguished, or exhibits but a few sparks to mark its lingering presence. Its confines 
are yet undetermined, and it is in the exploration of this vast deep-sea region that 
the finest field for submarine discovery yet remains.” 2 * * * * * 
In his Report 8 to the British Association in 1850, Forbes says : “ A more difficult task, 
and one which can be hardly hoped for fulfilment without the help of a steam vessel and 
continued calm weather, is the dredging of the deeps off the Hebrides in the open ocean. 
Much of the deep sea area around the Zetlands is sure to reward the explorer 
And lastly, though I fear the consummation, however devoutly wished for, is not likely 
soon to be effected, a series of dredgings between the Zetland and Faroe Isles, where the 
greatest depth is under 700 fathoms, would throw more light on the natural history of 
th< North Vtlantic, and on marine zoology generally, than any investigation that has yet 
been undertaken.” He saw with a prophetic eye that field of exploration which, twenty 
years later, became the scene of the investigations of Carpenter, Thomson, and Gwyn 
Jeffreys, and still more recently of Murray and Tizard. 
Th disciples of great men tend to assert dogmatically what their master suggested 
hypothetically, and it was so with the followers of Edward Forbes. They viewed the 
life-zero, not as a probability, but as a certainty, building their belief more on the & priori 
absurdity of creatures being able to live in the absence of light and air, and under the 
great pn-ssurt which must prevail in the depths of the sea, than on any direct evidence. 
The impulse had now been fairly given to the study of the marine zoology of the deep 
1 Wilhelm Fuchs (Die Venetianer Alpen, p. 43, 1844) remarked that fossils had been looked upon as repre- 
senting the organic forms of geological periods, but he could not accept that view as correct, for it was not at all 
1 m i - «ible that, a. on the earth certain organisms live at various heights above the sea, so in the ocean animals and 
plants might live at different levels ; each species is not so much the representative of the period as of the level at 
whi'-h the layer wa deposited. When the layers approached the surface the creatures which could live only at great 
depth- d -app ired, but continued to live in the deeper parts of the basin. Were any rapid and considerable action 
(a« that of an earthquake) to affect the Wtom of the sea, there might be found abnormal mixtures of organisms ; thus 
h* explain* the mixture of fo-ils ui the Alpine sediments. It will be seen from this that the facts observed by 
Forbes were destined to give a considerable impulse to marine investigation. 
Natural History of European Seas, p. 26; this classification was given as early as 1839 (see Memoir of 
Edward Forbes, p. 266). 
1 rt on the Investigation of British Marine Zoology by means of the Dredge, Part I., (Brit. A»s. Rejiort for 
1850, pp. 192-203) 
