CHAPTER XXVII

Summary

Before Sir James Ross's voyage to the Antarctic regions, the profound and dark abysses of the ocean were supposed to be entirely destitute of animal life; now it may be presumed that no part of it is uninhabited, since during that expedition live creatures were fished up from a depth of 6000 feet. But as most of the larger fish usually frequent shallow water near the coasts, deep seas must form barriers as impassable to the greater number of them as mountains do to land animals. The polar, the equatorial ocean, and the inland seas, have each their own particular inhabitants; almost all the species and many of the genera of the marine creation are different in the two hemispheres, and even in each particular sea; and under similar circumstances the species are for the most part representative, not the same. Identity of species, however, does occur, even at the two extremities of the globe, for living animals were brought up from the profound depths of the Antarctic Ocean which Sir James Ross recognised to be the very same species which he had often met with in the Arctic seas. “The only way they could have got from the one pole to the other must have been through the tropics; but the temperature of the sea in these regions is such that they could not exist in it unless at a depth of nearly 2000 fathoms. At that depth they might pass from the Arctic to the Antarctic Ocean without a variation of 5 degrees of temperature; whilst any land animal, at the most favourable season, must experience a difference of 50 degrees, and if in winter, no less than 150 degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer;”—a strong presumption that marine creatures can exist at the depth and under the enormous pressure of 12,000 feet of water.