cretaceous epoch, still alive, and doing their work of rock-making at the
bottom of existing seas. What if _Globigerina_ and the Coccoliths should
not be the only survivors of a world passed away, which are hidden
beneath three miles of salt water? The letter which Dr. Wyville Thomson
wrote to Dr. Carpenter in May, 1868, out of which all these expeditions
have grown, shows that this query had become a practical problem in Dr.
Thomson's mind at that time; and the desirableness of solving the problem
is put in the foreground of his reasons for urging 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