In order to justify this assertion, and yet, at the same time, not to
claim more for Professor Wyville Thomson and his colleagues than is their
due, I must give a brief history of the observations which have preceded
their exploration of this recondite field of research, and endeavour to
make clear what was the state of knowledge in December, 1872, and what
new facts have been added by the scientific staff of the _Challenger_. So
far as I have been able to discover, the first successful attempt to
bring up from great depths more of the sea bottom than would adhere to a
sounding-lead, was made by Sir John Ross, in the voyage to the Arctic
regions which he undertook in 1818. In the Appendix to the narrative of
that voyage, there will be found an account of a very ingenious apparatus
called "clams"--a sort of double scoop--of his own contrivance, which Sir
John Ross had made by the ship's armourer; and by which, being in
Baffin's Bay, in 72° 30' N. and 77° 15' W., he succeeded in bringing up
from 1,050 fathoms (or 6,300 feet), "several pounds" of a "fine green
mud," which formed the bottom of the sea in this region. Captain (now Sir
Edward) Sabine, who accompanied Sir John Ross on this cruise, says of
this mud that it was "soft and greenish, and that the lead sunk several
feet into it." A similar "fine green mud" was found to compose the sea
bottom in Davis Straits by Goodsir in 1845. Nothing is certainly known of
the exact nature of the mud thus obtained, but we shall see that the mud
of the bottom of the Antarctic seas is described in curiously similar
terms by Dr. Hooker, and there is no doubt as to the composition of this
deposit.

In 1850, Captain Penny collected in Assistance Bay, in Kingston Bay, and
in Melville Bay, which lie between 73° 45' and 74° 40' N., specimens of
the residuum left by melted surface ice, and of the sea bottom in these
localities. Dr. Dickie, of Aberdeen, sent these materials to Ehrenberg,