their eyes, especially, had a singular appearance, protruding like great
globes from their heads. Bivalve and univalve mollusca seem to be rare at
the greatest depths; but starfishes, sea urchins and other echinoderms,
zoophytes, sponges, and protozoa abound.

It is obvious that the _Challenger_ has the privilege of opening a new
chapter in the history of the living world. She cannot send down her
dredges and her trawls into these virgin depths of the great ocean
without bringing up a discovery. Even though the thing itself may be
neither "rich nor rare," the fact that it came from that depth, in that
particular latitude and longitude, will be a new fact in distribution,
and, as such, have a certain importance.

But it may be confidently assumed that the things brought up will very
frequently be zoological novelties; or, better still, zoological
antiquities, which, in the tranquil and little-changed depths of the
ocean, have escaped the causes of destruction at work in the shallows,
and represent the predominant population of a past age.

It has been seen that Audouin and Milne Edwards foresaw the general
influence of the study of distribution in depth upon the interpretation
of geological phenomena. Forbes connected the two orders of inquiry still
more closely; and in the thoughtful essay "On the connection between the
distribution of the existing Fauna and Flora of the British Isles, and
the geological changes which have affected their area, especially during
the epoch of the Northern drift," to which reference has already been
made, he put forth a most pregnant suggestion.

In certain parts of the sea bottom in the immediate vicinity of the
British Islands, as in the Clyde district, among the Hebrides, in the