74 
CRUISE OF H 31. S. CHALLENGER . 
Halifax is the port of call of nine lines of steamers ; 
and in the course of a short time, when the great 
inter-colonial railway shall be completed, it will 
give easy access to all the markets of Canada 
and the United States, and become the great winter 
terminus of the Dominion. 
Daring our stay, as we lay alongside the Naval 
Yard, every facility was afforded our Halifax friends 
to visit the ship. Many availed themselves of the 
opportunity, and evinced the greatest desire to see 
and examine the many submarine wonders that had 
up to this date been collected. 
The members of the Halifax Institute of Natural 
Science mustered in strong numbers, and appeared to 
take a special interest in the work already accom- 
plished. 
The blind crustacean zoophytes, the varieties of 
rare and new forms of corals and sponges, were 
well scanned ; while for the geologists, amongst 
other things attracting their attention, was a large 
boulder, which had been brought up in the dredge 
some 300 miles south of the coast. This was care- 
fully examined, and eventually recognised as a piece 
of Shelburne granite, which perhaps was carried oft 
to sea in long past ages, on an iceberg detached from 
the coast glacier of Nova Scotia, and deposited where 
we had found it, to be again recovered after such a 
lapse of time, and to help the solution of the glacial 
theory, according to which, at one time, ice held 
