Not so very long ago, our knowledge of anything beneath the ocean’s surface was extremely indefinite; for even of the coasts and shallows we knew little, marine zoology and botany being the last, and not the earliest, branches of natural history investigated by men of science. It was asserted that the specific gravity of water at great depths would cause the heaviest weights to remain suspended in mid-sea, and that animal existence was impossible at the bottom. When, some sixteen years ago, a few star-fish were brought up by a line from a depth of 1,200 fathoms, it was seriously considered that they had attached themselves at some midway point, and not at the bottom. In 1868-9-70, the Royal Society borrowed from the Admiralty two of Her Majesty’s vessels, the _Lightning_ and _Porcupine_; and in one of the latter’s trips, considerably to the south and west of Ireland, she sounded to a depth of 2,400 fathoms,(27) and was very successful in many dredging operations. As a result, it was then suggested that a vessel should be specially fitted out for a more important ocean voyage round the world, to occupy three or more years, and the cruise of the _Challenger_ was then determined upon. The story of that cruise is utterly unsensational; it is one simply of calm and unremitting scientific work, almost unaccompanied by peril. To some the treasures acquired will seem valueless. Among the earliest gains, obtained near Cape St. Vincent, with a common trawl, was a beautiful specimen of the Euplectella, “glass-rope sponge,” or “Venus’s flower-basket,” alive. This object of beauty and interest, sometimes seen in working naturalists’ and conchologists’ windows in London, had always previously been obtained from the seas of the Philippine Islands and Japan, to which it was thought to be confined, and its discovery so much nearer home was hailed with delight. It has a most graceful form, consisting of a slightly curved conical tube, eight or ten inches in height, contracted beneath to a blunt point. The walls are of light tracery, resembling opaque spun glass, covered with a lace-work of delicate pattern. The lower end is surrounded by an upturned fringe of lustrous fibres, and the wider end is closed by a lid of open network. These beautiful objects of nature make most charming ornaments for a drawing-room, but have to be kept under a glass case, as they are somewhat frail. In their native element they lie buried in the mud. They were afterwards found to be “the most characteristic inhabitants of the great depths all over the world.” Early in the voyage, no lack of living things were brought up—strange-looking fish, with their eyes blown nearly out of their heads by the expansion of the air in their air-bladders, whilst entangled among the meshes were many star-fish and delicate zoophytes, shining with a vivid phosphorescent light. A rare specimen of the clustered sea-polyp, twelve gigantic polyps, each with eight long fringed