Page:Nature - Volume 1.pdf/115

Nov. 25, 1869] the North Atlantic sea-bed, which for years, if not all but overlooked, certainly do not appear to have received from zoölogists the full credit which they undoubtedly deserved: geologists and palæontologists were evidently loth to abandon an hypothesis which in many respects suited their requirements.

However long truth may remain dormant, it must eventually assert itself in science as in all other matters, and the advancing strides of Biology and Geology soon demanded that such problems should be definitely and conclusively solved, and that the depths of the sea also should be carefully searched for the missing links of evidence requisite to complete their respective chains of reasoning. This was not felt to be the case in England alone; already in Scandinavia we find the savants of Norway and Sweden working with their slender means in the right direction, and assisted by their Governments with a hearty good-will and determination which could not fail to ensure valuable results, such as have already been brought forward by Sars, Nordenschjold, Torrell, and others.

In England, men of science, equally impressed with the importance of this inquiry, wished, with an honourable pride, to see that the country which had so long claimed the empire of the sea, should, in a question of so purely marine investigation, do something worthy of herself; and, being fully alive to the impossibility of doing so without the aid of the Government, applied themselves first to the task of procuring such assistance. Since it is an acknowledged but melancholy fact, that science does not in England either obtain the high position in society, or the influence with the ruling powers of the country which is accorded to it on the Continent in general, it is a subject for congratulation that the urgent appeals made to the Government should have in this instance proved so successful; and after the Government had provided the ships and equipment necessary for the expeditions of last year and this, it is a further subject for congratulation that the direction of these scientific explorations should have been entrusted to such able men as Dr. Carpenter, Prof. Wyville Thomson, and Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys, who constitute the present committee.

The expedition of last year being the first of its kind, had, as might be anticipated, many difficulties to contend with; the ship itself, besides starting at a late season of the year, was ill suited to the undertaking, was provided with but extremely inefficient winding machinery, imperfect appliances and instruments, and moreover, the observers and their assistants had, as it were, to serve an apprenticeship in the management of such operations.

This year, besides being fortunate in securing unusually favourable weather during the major part of the operations, all the above-mentioned difficulties had been provided against whilst, at the same time, the experience gained during the last year's cruise contributed very greatly to the complete success of the expedition as a whole.

As yet, it would be premature to attempt any description of the results of these explorations, for the Report which was commenced at the meeting of the Royal Society last Thursday is not yet concluded, but is to be continued at its next meeting; sufficient, however, has been already brought forward to prove satisfactorily the great importance of the data obtained to science in general. Besides corroborating, and in some respects correcting the conclusions deduced from the operations of the last year's expedition, many new facts and observations have been collected, whilst the supply of specimens and materials for examination which have been brought home will no doubt give full occupation to the members of the committee for some time to come, besides obliging them to bring to their assistance the services of the physicist, chemist, and mineralogist, each in their several departments.

The practicability of exploring even the deepest portions of the ocean bed may now be considered to be fully established; the conclusive proofs brought forward showing the existence of warm and cold areas of the deep-sea bottom, in close proximity to one another, each inhabited by its distinct and characteristic fauna, is as surprising as it is important in its scientific bearings, and particularly in its relations to geology and palæontology; whilst the investigations into the temperature of the different ocean zones, and the nature of the gases contained in the seawater at various depths, are intensely interesting and suggestive.

The question as to the existence of an azoic ocean zone at any depth, must now be regarded as finally settled in the negative. The hypothesis which appeared to Edward Forbes to be warranted by all the data which the science of his day could supply, must now be abandoned; it is certain, however, that all who knew him will do his memory the justice of believing that, were he now alive, so far from regretting the necessity of withdrawing a suggestion which appeared to explain several important points in science now once more involved in obscurity, he would have been the first of the converts to the views now proved to be more correct, and the first to congratulate the members of the deep-sea dredging committee upon so successful and brilliant a termination of their labours.

T is a well-known remark of the historian of science that our progress in astronomy has been made in exact accordance with certain laws which regulate the advancement of knowledge. Neither the march of the sun by day, nor that of the moon by night, is more rigidly surrounded and circumscribed by law than the march of that intellect which has successfully interpreted celestial motions.

We had first of all an observing age. Thousands of years ago in the plains of the East we had astronomers who, albeit with imperfect instruments, lacked neither zeal nor intelligence in their nightly study of the stars. Many of their theoretical ideas were untenable, nay, even absurd, but yet they served to bind together into a formal law the mass of observations which their nightly industry collected.

And so step by step our knowledge of celestial motions progressed, until it culminated in the discoveries of Copernicus and Kepler; and we were presented at last with a bird's-eye view of the solar system, taken, as it were, from without, in which that which appears to be, finally gave place to that which is. Thus the first stage was passed, and astronomers had now another question to put to the universe: it was no longer What are the real motions of