the Government to
undertake the work of exploration:--

[Footnote 7: See above, "On a Piece of Chalk," p. 13.]

"Two years ago, M. Sars, Swedish Government Inspector of Fisheries, had
an opportunity, in his official capacity, of dredging off the Loffoten
Islands at a depth of 300 fathoms. I visited Norway shortly after his
return, and had an opportunity of studying with his father, Professor
Sars, some of his results. Animal forms were _abundant_; many of them
were new to science; and among them was one of surpassing interest, the
small crinoid, of which you have a specimen, and which we at once
recognised as a degraded type of the _Apiocrinidoe_, an order hitherto
regarded as extinct, which attained its maximum in the Pear Encrinites of
the Jurassic period, and whose latest representative hitherto known was
the _Bourguettocrinus_ of the chalk. Some years previously, Mr.
Absjornsen, dredging in 200 fathoms in the Hardangerfjord, procured
several examples of a Starfish (_Brisinga_), which seems to find its
nearest ally in the fossil genus _Protaster_. These observations place it
beyond a doubt that animal life is abundant in the ocean at depths
varying from 200 to 300 fathoms, that the forms at these great depths
differ greatly from those met with in ordinary dredgings, and that, at
all events in some cases, these animals are closely allied to, and would
seem to be directly descended from, the Fauna of the early tertiaries.

"I think the latter result might almost have been anticipated; and,
probably, further investigation will largely add to this class of data,
and will give us an opportunity of testing our determinations of the
zoological position of some fossil types by an examination of the soft
parts of their recent representatives. The main cause of the destruction,
the migration, and the extreme modification of animal types, appear to be
change of climate, chiefly depending upon oscillations of the earth's
crust. These oscillations do not appear to have ranged, in the Northern
portion of the Northern Hemisphere, much beyond 1,000 feet since the
commencement of the Tertiary Epoch. The temperature of deep waters seems
to be constant for all latitudes at 39 deg.; so that an immense area of the
North Atlantic must have had its conditions unaffected by tertiary or
post-tertiary oscillations."[8]

[Footnote 8: The Depths of the Sea, pp. 51-52.]

As we shall see, the assumption that the temperature of the deep sea is