Abstract
II.
IT still seems but the other day when every zoologist believed with Edward Forbes that not very far below the surface of the sea there existed a region where life was unknown, or where at the most, if it existed it showed but a few sparks, which only served “to mark its lingering presence;” and yet even when Forbes was writing thus, Sir John Ross had brought up from some 800 fathoms deep in Baffin's Bay, “a beautiful Caput medusœ,” and the present president2 of the Royal Society had written (August 31,1845), “It is probable that animal life exists at a very great depth—in the ocean.” “On one occasion, off Victoria Land, between the parallels of 71° and 78° S.L., the dredge was repeatedly employed, once with great success at 380 fathoms,” and “on another occasion the sounding-line brought up distinct traces of animal life from a depth of 550 fathoms.” The history, however, of the subject, is to be found recorded in Sir Wyville Thomson's “Depths of the Sea,” and we only here refer to it to remind the reader how completely changed are the general ideas on this subject; and we learn without surprise that “the most prominent and remarkable biological result of the Challenger's voyage is the final establishment of the fact that the distribution of living [animal] beings has no depth limit, but that animals of all the marine invertebrate classes, and probably fishes also, exist over the whole of the flora of the ocean;” but although life is thus universally extended, probably the number of species as well as of individuals diminishes after a certain depth is reached. This distribution of animal life depends in a marked degree either upon the nature of the sea-bottom or upon the conditions which modify the nature of that bottom. The fauna at great depths was found to be remarkably uniform, and the distribution area seemed to depend mainly on the maintenance of a tolerably uniform temperature. It is curious to note that the families which are peculiarly characteristic of the abyssal fauna, contain a larger number of species and individuals, and these are larger and more fully developed in the Antarctic Ocean, than they are in the Atlantic and the North Pacific.
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The “Challenger” in the Atlantic 1 . Nature 17, 185–188 (1878). https://doi.org/10.1038/017185a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/017185a0