Lyman.] 
48 
[October 6, 
and it was in carrying out its special investigations that his atten- 
tion was drawn to the importance of detailed examinations of 
the sea-bottom and its inhabitants. He was early led to doubt 
the prevailing belief that, below a few hundred fathoms, no 
animal life existed on the floor of the ocean, a theory which 
Forbes had founded on his observations in the Mediterranean. 
Basing this doubt at first on the Foraminifera dredged from great 
depths, Pourtales was afterwards able to show other animals 
which unquestionably had been taken alive in similar depths. 
At the same time he made an exhaustive study of the sea-bottom 
itself, of which he examined the many sj>ecimens in the cabinet 
of the Coast Survey, and filled out his information from his own 
collections. As a result of these studies he, in 1871, published in 
Petermann’s Geographische Mittheilungen, a connected account 
of the ocean-floor of the western border of the Atlantic, accom- 
panied by a map. The biological results of his dredging expe- 
ditions were, for the most part, published by the Museum of 
Comparative Zoology, and gave to science an entire new fauna, 
besides showing many unlooked for facts, such as the occurrence 
of Rhizocrinus and other boreal species in the deep waters of the 
Caribbean Sea. More than any other man may Pourtales be 
called the pioneer of deep-sea dredging in American waters. 
On the death of his father, Count Pourtales received a sufficient 
fortune, and he was thenceforth able to give his whole time to his 
favorite studies. He resigned his position on the Coast Survey, 
and accepted that of Keeper of the Museum of Comparative 
Zoology. To the arrangement of this museum he devoted the 
last years of his life, with his usual industry and quiet energy. 
In the midst of labors so pleasant to him, his strong frame was 
suddenly undermined by a treacherous internal disease, which 
ended his life in his fifty-seventh year. 
Count Pourtales was elected a corresponding member of the 
Society in 1847, and became a resident member in 1876, since 
which time he has served as one of the Council. 
Theodore Lyman. 
