Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
STOMIAS BOA. HALF NATURAL SIZE. FROM A DEPTH OF 1,900 METRES. (AFTER FILHOL.)
THE FAUNA OF THE DEEP SEA
PREFACE
The time may come when there will be no portion ofthe earth’s surface that has not been surveyed andexplored by man.
The work of enterprising travellers has now beencarried on within a measurable distance of the NorthPole; the highest mountain ranges are graduallysuccumbing to the geological surveyor; the heart ofAfrica is giving up to us its secrets and its treasures,and plans of all the desert places of the earth arebeing made and tabulated.
The bottom of the deep sea was until quiterecently one of these terræ incognitæ. It was regardedby most persons, when it entered into theirminds to consider it at all, as one of those regionsabout which we do not know anything, never shallknow anything, and do not want to know anything.
viiiBut the men of science fifty years ago were notdisposed to take this view of the matter. Pushingtheir inquiries as to the character of the sea-faunainto deeper and deeper water, they at length demandedinformation as to the existence of forms ofanimal life in the greatest depths. Unable themselvesto bear the heavy expenses involved in suchan investigation, they sought for and obtained theassistance of the Government, in the form of nationalships, for the work, and then our knowledge of thedepths of the great ocean may be said to have commenced.
We know a good deal now, and in the course oftime we may know a great deal more, about thisinteresting region; but it is not one which, in ourgeneration at any rate, any human being will ever visit.
We may be able to plant the Union Jack on thesummit of Mount Everest, we may drag our sledgesto the South Pole, and we may, some day, be able totravel with ease and safety in the Great Sahara; butwe cannot conceive that it will ever be possible forus to