Читать книгу The fauna of the deep sea онлайн

6 страница из 19

Forbes was only expressing the general opinion of naturalists of his time when he refers with evident hesitation to the existence of an azoic region. His own dredging excursions in depths of over one hundred fathoms proved the existence of many peculiar species that were previously unknown to science. ‘They were like,’ he says, ‘the few stray bodies of strange red men, which tradition reports to have been washed on the shores of the Old World before the discovery of the New, and which served to indicate the existence of unexplored realms inhabited by unknown races, but not to supply information about their character, habits, and extent.’

In the absence of any systematic investigation of the bottom of the deep sea, previous to Forbes’s time the only information of deep-sea animals was due to the accidental entanglement of certain forms in sounding lines, or to the minute worms that were found in the mud adhering to the lead.

As far back as 1753, Ellis described an Alcyonarian that was brought up by a sounding line from a depth of 236 fathoms within eleven degrees of the North Pole by a certain Captain Adriaanz of the ‘Britannia.’ The specimen was evidently an Umbellula, and it is stated that the arms (i.e. Polyps) were of a bright yellow colour and fully expanded when first brought on deck.