ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 433 
umes of the “ Memoirs” had been completed, and yet these publications 
had been appearing in parts for fourteen and thirteen years, respectively. 
The reports upon the great collections gathered by Alexander Agassiz’s 
expeditions gave these museum publications an enormous impetus, so 
that at the time of his death in 1910 the fifty-fourth volume of the 
“ Bulletin ” and the fortieth of the “ Memoirs” were appearing. 
Alexander Agassiz realized that the government had always failed 
to provide adequately for the publication of the results of its many 
explorations, and thus he himself assumed the direction, and defrayed 
the entire expense, of all of the publications resulting from expeditions 
under government auspices of which he was the scientific director. No 
results of explorations have been more appropriately published or better 
illustrated than those under the auspices of Alexander Agassiz. 
Alexander Agassiz did most wisely also in sending the various col- 
lections not only to specialists in America but to the leading students in 
Europe and Japan, thus securing the cooperation of those best com- 
petent to pronounce upon them. 
During the first cruise of the Blake he discovered that the prevail- 
ing winds blowing over the Gulf Stream caused a marked concentra- 
tion of floating life upon its western edge, and that this aggregation 
was nowhere richer than at the Tortugas, Florida. Accordingly under 
government auspices he visited the Tortugas in March and April, 1881, 
with Dr. J. W. Fewkes as his assistant. Although greatly hindered by 
stormy weather, he succeeded in securing a large collection of marine 
animals, notably the Porpitide and Velellide, an elaborate and fully 
illustrated account of which he published in 1883; and in the same 
year in the “Memoirs” of the American Academy he presented the 
results of his studies of the fine coral reefs of the Tortugas. 
His “ Blake” Echini appeared in 1883; and in 1888 came his last 
“Blake” publication, a general account of her three notable cruises. 
This crowning work comes nearer to being a popular book than any- 
thing he, as sole author, ever published. It is a general review of the 
results of the Blake’s voyages between 187” and 1880, and it appears 
in volumes 14 and 15 of the “ Bulletins” of the Museum of Compara- 
tive Zoology, being illustrated by 545 maps and figures of the highest 
artistic and scientific merit. 
It is rarely indeed that the results of exploration have been thus 
summarized in a single work, and none gives a clearer idea of the 
strange forms of the creatures that live upon the cold dark floor of the 
deep-sea than does this one. 
The results may be significantly summarized by stating that we 
now know more of the topography and of the animals of the depths of 
the Gulf Stream and West Indian region than of any submarine area of 
equal extent in the world, and that this knowledge is due to the ex- 
VOL. LXXVII.—30. 
