178 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[July 30, 1910. 
Deep Sea Investigations. 
Sir John Murray, a member of the British 
Government Challenger expedition, and for sev¬ 
eral months in command of the Norwegian ship 
Michael Sars, is in the United States and re¬ 
cently told a representative of the Evening Post 
of the work that has been done in deep-sea in¬ 
vestigation. He said in part: 
“There have been great improvements in ther¬ 
mometers, water bottles, nets and all the imple¬ 
ments of the deep-sea naturalist in the past ten 
years,” said Sir John as he began to tell of the 
present expedition. “I have been anxious to do 
some more experimental work for some time, 
and when the opportunity came I gladly availed 
myself of it. You must know that recently the 
Norwegians have been the most active nation in 
the work of deep-sea exploration, and this last 
year they have had a specially built steamship, 
the Michael Sars, operating off their own coast. 
Knowing .of this I offered to take the vessel for 
four months and pay all the expenses for that 
period, if they would lend her to me. This they 
agreed to do, and we have been hard at it since 
April. 
“We first did some work in the Bay of Biscay 
and in the Straits of Gibraltar. In the Straits 
there are two currents, the upper of which flows 
from tjie Atlantic Ocean into the Mediterranean 
Sea, while the lower takes exactly the opposite 
direction. These we measured for velocity, den¬ 
sity and so on, and we made some rather in¬ 
teresting discoveries, particularly one that the 
lower or outflowing current poured out in a 
dense flow into the Atlantic at a rate of five 
knots an hour in some places. The depths at 
which the two currents pass each other vary 
from fifty to one hundred fathoms, according 
to the tide. K 
“From our anchorage in the middle of the 
Straits we started down the coast of Africa and 
went as far as the Canaries. The prevailing 
wind is offshore there, and this causes all the 
warm surface to be blown out to sea, while the 
cold underwaters come up close inshore. We 
made some interesting temperature observations. 
Then we did work in the Sargasso sea, mainly 
in collecting pelagic plants. 
“The Azores were next visited, and from there 
the vessel went west to a point south of the 
Grand Banks. There we took a series of tem¬ 
perature observations of cross sections of the 
Gulf Stream, and the results we obtained were 
so different from what we expected and so in¬ 
teresting to me that the ship, after going north 
to St. John’s. Newfoundland, has continued across 
the Atlantic, following the stream’s course. I 
expect to meet her in Scotland about the end of 
the month. 
“In the course of the trip we made observa¬ 
tions from seventy-four different stations. On 
the physical side of the work Prof. Henson made 
600 observations of temperature at different 
depths. They were all made with two deep-sea 
thermometers, read at the same time, and they 
are accurate to within a 200th part of a degree. 
On the whole they agree closely with the work 
of the Challenger expedition. 
“Interesting experiments to determine the de¬ 
gree of light in the ocean were made in the 
Sargasso Sea. Here we exposed photographic 
plates at various depths and found that at 300 
fathoms the effect of light was clearly marked; 
at 500 fathoms it was discernible, but at 900 
fathoms no effect could be discovered. Of 
course the various colors of the spectrum pene¬ 
trate to unequal depths; the violet rays probably 
reach the great depths a mile or two. 
“In fishing for pelagic plants we used closing 
nets of the finest silk gauze, but many of the 
plants were so tiny as to go right through this 
material, and we did not find them until we had 
recourse to a new process. Specimens of water 
from whatever depth we desired were brought 
up and subjected to contrifugal motion in a 
centrifuge. All the tiny organisms immediately 
went to the bottom. The dregs, as it were, were 
put in a still smaller centrifuge, and the process 
repeated. In this manner we were able to ob¬ 
tain the tiniest forms, and we found that they 
abounded in every litre of water down to fifty 
fathoms. Below that they were scarcer. 
“These minute, microscopic plants or cocco- 
Iithophoridae, as they are called, feed on other 
organisms none the less. Off Newfoundland 
they feed on the tiny brown flagellae. 
“For bigger game, the deep-sea fish, we used 
tow nets with wire ropes and special trawls. We 
had seven nets, which we used at depths of 25, 
50, 75, 100, 500, 1,000 and 2,000 fathoms, respec¬ 
tively. One was a huge tow net of three yards’ 
diameter, and one of the trawls had a head rope 
of fifty feet. We trawled at 2,900 fathoms, near¬ 
ly three miles, and at that depth found life 
rather scarce, but from 300 to 1,400 fathoms we 
made huge hauls. Off the coast of Ireland we 
got 320 in one catch. 
“The fish that come from the great depths 
are peculiar looking creatures. In the first place 
they are all black and they are very fierce look¬ 
ing. Why, several times we caught some which 
had, as it were, crawled around their prey in 
order to eat it, just as a boa constrictor would 
crawl around a kid or fawn to swallow it, and 
had thus succeeded in eating fish larger than 
themselves. The jaws of the deep-sea fishes are 
especially adapted to this kind of feeding, and 
they are equipped with a tremendous array of 
jagged and irregular teeth. In their element a 
thousand fathoms down they must be terrifying 
animals of prey. 
“When they reach the surface they are al¬ 
ways dead, except some that come from com¬ 
paratively shallow water. These occasionally 
struggle for a moment on their backs. In most 
cases they have blown up, as you might say, 
their eyes are blown far out of their sockets 
and they are greatly swelled. This strange ap¬ 
pearance is caused by the sudden relief from 
the enormous pressure of the deeps which 
amounts to about a ton to the square inch for 
each thousand fathoms. 
“Oddly enough these organisms that live under 
pressure of three tons to the square inch some 
of them have not a heavy bony structure. In 
very cold water there is comparatively light for¬ 
mation of carbonate of lime, and the bones of 
the fish have, therefore, comparatively little cal¬ 
careous matter in them. Their spines are not 
stiff, and if laid on their sides across your hand 
they will hang down like ribbons. 
“The eyes of the forms that live on the bot¬ 
tom are peculiar. Many of these forms are 
blind, and in some the eyes have degenerated 
almost to the point of disappearance. Others 
have huge eyes so situated as to have a com¬ 
manding range of vision. Why this should be 
we do not know, but my theory is that in some 
the loss of the eyes is compensated for by the 
formation of the great number of sensitive ten¬ 
tacles and processes, like antennae, that appear 
on the heads of those which show the eye weak¬ 
ness. These rely on touch alone. On the other 
hand, those with over-developed eyes need such 
a formation to do anything by the sense of 
sight in the strange phosphorescence at the sea 
bottom and which they themselves give off. 
“Speaking of phosphorescence, many of these 
bottom dwellers have a number of organs or 
processes which are evidently for the sole pur¬ 
pose of generating light, and this glow is really 
the only light, as we understand the word, found 
at the bottom. When it has been calm for sev¬ 
eral days, this phosphorescence, which the fish 
of less abysmal depths also possess, may be seen, 
for at such times the life of the sea tends to 
come toward the surface, to be driven down 
again by the motion when the wind begins to 
blow. 
“Of course below 100 fathoms there is prac¬ 
tically no wave motion, but in some very deep 
places we have found ridges of rock swept bare 
of the mud which is composed of the remains 
of organic life by the tidal motion which sweeps 
through the whole sea. 
“The question of life in the sea is a very in¬ 
teresting one,” said Sir John in answer to a 
query as to whether there was any stratum as 
has been supposed, in which nothing lives, but 
through which the dead radiolaria and globi- 
gerina and their shells fall lil-se a rain to the sea 
floor. 
“I think we have proved that there is no such 
belt or stratum. That has always been my con¬ 
tention, and I used to argue with Agassiz about 
it. Of course the rain you speak of, the rain of 
dead organisms that forms the ooze, is an estab¬ 
lished fact, but I believe that there is life in 
every layer of the sea. 
“You see, those pelagic plants I spoke of, the 
coccolithophoridie, were found by our expedi¬ 
tion at almost all depths.” Sir John added with 
his quick humor, We found them, and the 
Germans didn’t. 
“We shall probably do some work along the 
coast of Scotland for a couple of weeks when 
I rejoin the expedition,” he continued, “and I 
am anxious to learn the results of following the 
Gulf Stream. The temperature observations 
which we made in it certainly were extraordi¬ 
nary. Indeed, the trip was a success in many 
ways, for we discovered a number of new 
species as well as recording' the new tempera¬ 
tures. It is delicate and fascinating work.” 
A Horsefly. 
An English tourist, visiting Arran, was ar¬ 
ranging to have a good day’s sport. Being told 
that the cleg, or horsefly, would suit his purpose 
admirably for a lure, he addressed himself to 
Christy, the Highland servant girl. “I say, my 
girl, can you get me some horseflies?” 
Christy looked stupid. Finding that she did 
not comprehend him, he exclaimed, “Why, girl, 
did you never see a horsefly?” 
“Naa, sir,” said the girl, “but a wanse saw a 
coo jump ower a precipice.”—Sporting and Dra¬ 
matic News. 
