weighed many tons. That the southern circumpolar area is chiefly land, and not water, seems to be further indicated by the absence of any such low temperature of the deeper water as Sir George Nares ascertained to exist beneath the palæocrystic' ice of high northern latitudes. For the thermometers lowered through borings in that ice gave 28° Fahr. at all depths, this being the lowest temperature at which sea-water can remain unfrozen under ordinary circumstances. On the other hand, the bottom-temperatures taken in the Challenger in closest proximity to the Antarctic ice-barrier nowhere proved to be lower than the temperature of the surface-stratum which was cooled by the melting of the bergice, thus indicating the absence of any supply of yet colder water from a source nearer the Pole.

Thus the Antarctic " ice-barrier" is to be regarded as the margin of a polar "ice-cap," whose thickness at its edge is probably about 2000 feet, nine tenths of it lying beneath the water-line. This margin is not permanent, but is continually wasting away like the terminal portion of a land-glacier-not, however, by liquefaction, but by disruption-and is as continually renewed by the spreading out of the piled-up ice of the area within. What may be the thickness of the "icecap" nearer its polar centre we have at present no means of knowing; but it must doubtless be kept down by the facility of downward flow in almost every direction toward its periphery of 10,000 miles.

In regard to the animal life of the deep sea, the Challenger researches do not seem likely to yield any new general result of striking interest. Our previous work had shown that a depth of three miles, a pressure of three tons on the square inch, an entire absence of sunlight, and a temperature below 32°, might by sustained by a considerable number and variety of animal types; and this conclusion has been fully confirmed and widely extended. Many specimens have been brought up alive from depths exceeding four miles, at which the pressure was four tons on the square inch, considerably exceeding that exerted by the hydraulic presses used for packing Manchester goods. Even the "protected" Even the "protected"

thermometers specially constructed for deep-sea sounding were frequently crushed; and a sealed glass tube containing air, having been lowered (within a copper case) to a depth of 2000 fathoms, was reduced to a fine powder almost like snow, by what Sir Wyville Thomson ingeniously characterized as an implosion, the pressure having apparently been resisted until it could no longer be borne, and the whole having been then disintegrated at the same moment. The rationale of the resistance afforded by soft-bodied animals to a pressure which thus affects hard glass is simply that they contain no air, but consist of solids and liquids only; and that since their constituent parts are not subject to more than a very trifling change of bulk, while the equality of the pressure in every direction will prevent any change in their form, there is really nothing to interfere with the ordinary performance of their vital functions.

The entire absence of solar light, which constitutes another most important peculiarity in the conditions of deep-sea life, would seem at first sight to be an absolute bar to its maintenance. Experimental evidence has not yet, I believe, been obtained of the direct penetration of the solar rays to more than 100 fathoms; but as I dredged slow growing red calcareous alga (true corallines) in the Mediterranean at a depth of 150 fathoms (at, or below, which Edward Forbes also would seem to have met with them), the actinic, if not the luminous, rays must probably penetrate to that range. Below what Edward Forbes termed the coralline zone, it would seem impossible that any other type of vegetable life can be sustained than such as have the capacity of the fungi for growing in the dark; living, like them, upon material supplied by the decomposition of organic compounds. Such lowly plants have been found by Professor P. M. Duncan in corals dredged from more than 1000 fathoms' depth.

Upon what, then, do deep-sea animals feed? In the early stage of this inquiry it was ascertained by Dr. Frankland that the samples of water procured by the Porcupine, not only at considerable distances from land, but also from bottoms exceeding 500 fathoms' depth, contained so much organic matter not in a decom

posing state that animals having a large absorbent surface, and requiring but a small proportion of solids in their food, might be sustained by simple imbibition. And an adequate provision for the continual restoration of such material to the ocean-water seemed to be made by the surface-vegetation which fringes almost every sea-margin, and which occasionally extends itself over large tracts in the open ocean, as, notably, in the Sargasso Sea. But the Challenger's researches have thrown a new light on this question, by showing that the animals of the deep sea are largely dependent for their food upon the minute organisms and the débris of larger ones, which are continually falling to the bottom from the upper waters.

This débris (says Mr. Moseley) is no doubt mainly debrived from the surface pelagic flora and fauna, but is also to a large extent composed of refuse of various kinds washed down by rivers, or floated out to sea from shores, and sunken to the bottom when water-logged. The dead pelagic animals must fall as a constant rain of food upon the habitation of their deepsea dependents. Maury, speaking of the surface foraminifera, wrote, The sea, like the snow-cloud, with its flakes in a calm, is always letting fall upon its bed showers of microscopic shells." It might be supposed that these shells and other surface animals would consume so long a time in dropping to the bottom in great depths that their soft tissues would be decomposed, and that they would have ceased to be serviceable as food by the time they reached the ocean-bed. Such, however, is not the case, partly because the salt water of the sea exercises a strongly preservative effect on animal tissues, partly because the time required for sinking is in reality not very great.*

*

Of this Mr. Moseley assured himself by an experimental test, which indicated that the dead body of a floating salpa might sink to a depth of 2000 fathoms in little more than four days, while its body might remain for a month so far undecomposed as to be serviceable as food to deep-sea animals. As land was neared, moreover, many interesting proofs were obtained of the feeding of deep-sea animals on débris derived from the neighboring shores.

Thus, off the coast of New South Wales we dredged from 400 fathoms a large sea-urchin which had its stomach full of pieces of a sea

large palm-fruit as large as an orange. In one of these fruits, which had hard woody external coats, the albumen of the fruit was still preserved, perfectly fresh in appearance, and white like that of a ripe cocoanut. The hollows of the fruits were occupied by two molluscs; the husks and albumen were bored by a teredo-like mollusc; and the fibres of the husks had among them small nematoid worms.*

Branches of trees, also, and leaves of shrubs, in a water-logged condition, were occasionally brought up in the dredge from great depths; and their occurrence, as Mr. Moseley remarks, is of importance, not only to the naturalist, as showing that deep-sea animals may draw large supplies of food from such sources, but also to the geologist, as indicating the manner in which specimens of land vegetation may have been imbedded in deposits formed at great depths.

The entire absence of sunlight on the deep-sea bottom seems to have the same effect as the darkness of caves, in reducing to a rudimentary condition the eyes of such of their inhabitants as fish and crustacea, which ordinarily enjoy visual power; and many of these are provided with enormously long and delicate feelers or hairs, in order that they may feel their way about with these, just as a blind man does with his stick. But other deep-sea animals have enormously large eyes, enabling them to make the best of the little light there is in the depths, which is probably derived (as suggested in the report of the Porcupine dredgings) from the phosphorescence emitted by many deepzoophytes. "It seems certain," says sea animals, especially a certain kind of Mr. Moseley," that the deep sea must be lighted here and there by greater or smaller patches of luminous alcyonarians, with wide intervals, probably, of total darkness intervening; and very possibly the animals with eyes congregate round these sources of light." It is remarkable that with such poverty of light there should be such richness of color among deep-sea animals. Although most deepsea fish are of a dull black color, and some white as if bleached, deep-sea crustaceans, echinoderms, and zoophytes usually exhibit more color than the cor

Again, we dredged from between the New Hebrides and Australia, from 1400 fathoms, a piece of wood and half a dozen examples of a

* "Notes by a Naturalist," p. 582. NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXI., No. 6

water. Thus the deep-sea the deep-sea shrimps, which were obtained in very great abun

dance, were commonly of an intensely bright scarlet; deep-sea holothurians are often of a deep purple; and many deepsea corals have their soft structures tinged with a madder-coloring matter resembling that which occurs in surface-swimming jelly-fish.

As was to be expected from the results of the Lightning and Porcupine dredgings, the more extended explorations of the Challenger have shown that there still live in the sea-depths a number of animal forms which were supposed, until thus found, to be extinct, existing only as fossils. And large numbers of interesting new genera and species of known families of animals were obtained; while many forms which had been previously accounted of extreme rarity have proved to be really common, having a wide geographical range, and occurring in large numbers in particular spots. This is the case, for example, with the beautiful pentacrinus, a survivor from the old Liassic times, of which the living specimens preserved in all the museums of the world could have been counted on the fingers not many years ago, all of them having been brought up on fishing-lines from the neighborhood of the West India Islands. As many as twenty specimens of a new species of this most interesting type, however, had been brought up from a depth of 800 fathoms in one of the Porcupine dredgings off the coast of Portugal. The Challenger made a large collection, including several new species, from various localities. And yet more recently the dredgings of Professor Alexander Agassiz in the Gulf of Mexico have shown how thickly many parts of the sea

bed are covered with these "lily stars” mounted upon their long wavy stalks.

Those, however, who had expected results of greater zoological and palæontological importance from these explorations must confess to some disappointment:

Most enthusiastic representations (says Mr. Moseley) were held by many naturalists, and such were especially put forward by the late Professor Agassiz, who had hopes of finding almost all important fossil forms existing in life and vigor at great depths. Such hopes were doomed to disappointment; but even to the last, every cuttle-fish which came up in our

We

deep-sea net was squeezed to see if it had a Belemnite's bone in its back, and Trilobites were eagerly looked out for. picked up no missing links to fill up the gaps of the great zoological family tree. The results of the Challenger's voyage have gone to prove that the missing links are to be sought out rather by more careful investigation of the

structure of animals already partially known than by hunting for entirely new ones in the deep sea.*

The work which has been already done by Mr. Moseley himself in this direction, contained in the memoirs he has presented to the Royal and Linnæan Societies, is of first-rate value. And if the whole, or even any considerable part, of the vast Challenger collection shall be worked out by the various specialists among whom it has been distributed, with anything like the same completeness and ability, it cannot be questioned that the series of volumes in which the scientific results of this voyage will be embodied will far surpass in interest and importance those reports of previous Circumnavigation Expeditions which are accounted models of their class.-The Nineteenth Century.

THE publication of the papers which Metternich left behind him has now been begun, and has recalled the attention of Europe to the somewhat forgotten personality of the man who for forty years

* "Selection from Metternich's Papers." Edited by the Chancellor's son, Prince Richard Metternich-Winneburg. Arranged by Alfons von Klinkowström. Authorized Original German edition. Vienna. Wilhelm Braumüller, 1880. First Part. Two volumes.

guided Austrian politics, and exercised an apparently profound influence on the whole of Europe. The weighty events and the important men of the second half of this century have naturally cast the comparatively small men and things. of its second, third, and fourth decade into the shade. But here we are carried back once more to the beginning of the

* "Notes by a Naturalist," p. 587.

century, when men and things were not, indeed, wanting in the greatness of their proportions, although it might be said that they cannot compete with those of our day in lasting historical importance. In fact, the present two volumes, which are all that have as yet appeared, bring before us one of the principal agents in the events of that period to speak of them in person, and they remind us, in the most impressive way, that the old Chancellor, who is to our generation nothing more than an embodiment of that long period of dull silence, was also once young, bold, active, animated, and that he played a leading part in the most stirring of all historical dramas. It is in this, and not in any unexpected disclosures, that the interest of the book lies. The autobiographic fragments, as well as the other essays of the Prince, certainly show the double nature of the man in a clearer light than it has hitherto appeared in; but that was by no means the purpose of the author. It is his vanity which has played him the trick of making him betray himself, as vanity at times will do. For the rest, these memorabilia, if we may call them so, are all very general, and except for indirect psychological side-lights such as this, they offer little to interest us, either anecdotal or historical. The writer glides rapidly over everything in the events that is really important and needs explanation. We get judgments-flattering judgments of himself especially-explanations of "principles," but we learn nothing new about the occurrences themselves. At most, the preliminary history of the Postdam Treaty, which was already so fully made known through Hardenberg's Memoir, is completed a little.

The book falls into two, happily unequal, halves, of which the recording statesman fills the one, and the acting statesman the other. There is in the first place an "Autobiographical Memoir," written in 1844, supplemented by a "Key to the Explanation of my Way of Thinking and Acting," written in 1852, and interpolated with a "History of the Alliances of 1813 and 1814 " written in 1829.* Then there is a character of

* The tone in which the Emperor Francis is spoken of in this paper, as one who belonged to the past, leads me to surmise that the paper

Napoleon, written in French in 1820, and a character of the Emperor Alexander, written in German in 1829; between these are remarks by the editor, which might have been fitly given under the text, while the highly interesting quotations from unedited letters which they contain would have been better left to the second part. This second and much more comprehensive and interesting part brings together letters, dispatches, reports, instructions, proposals, etc., of the years 1793-1815, and mostly in the French language. It is there that the main interest of the book centres. True, the original documents from Metternich's official work which are here given to the public are only to a small extent unprinted before, but they, of course, contain much that is of importance, especially from the period of his Paris ambassadorship (1806-1809), and from the first period of his Ministry (1809-1812), though even these are extremely fragmentary and full of gaps. However, these dispatches, published here for the first time, even when they offer nothing new to the historian, are often noteworthy to the psychologist, and always entertaining and stimulating to the general reader. Of course, most of the reports and decrees which are given in this work are already published either in extracts or in extenso in Oncken's massive "History of Austria and Prussia during the War of Liberation," while many others, often much more important, which are contained in the later work, are entirely wanting in "Metternich's Papers." Nay, we seek in vain in it for even those documents by whose publication Oncken has set the Metternichian politics of the year 1812 in a quite new, and on the whole favorable light. Much also-as, for example, the famous nine hours' interview between Napoleon and Metternich in the Marcolini Palace at Dresden, during the armistice of 1813-we have known already as existing for more than twenty years through Thiers, to whom Metternich. communicated an outline of it.*

We

was either written for the first time, or at any rate was rewritten, after 1835.

*This has since been more exactly imparted to us by Helfert, in his " Marie Louise." I intentionally abstain in this Review from all learned critical detail, but should like to find

are, moreover, already long since instructed concerning his ambassadorship at Vienna, through D'Haussonville, who had the opportunity of seeing the MS. Memoirs and Correspondence of Talleyrand, and of whom Th. von Bernhardi has already made excellent use, as well as through Villemain, to whom Count Narbonne gave extensive communications; and again more recently through Hardenberg, Ranke, Gentz, Klinkowström, and J. A. von Helfert, who have gone profoundly-though not so profoundly as Oncken--into the Austrian State archives; we are already, I say, far better informed on many matters, through various important publications of the last twenty years, than through what these new volumes give us, which, for example, pass over the history of the Treaty of January 3d, 1815, and, in fact, do not so much as mention the existence of such a Treaty at all. A. Beer's biography of the Chancellor (in the fifth volume of "Der Neue Plutarch"), which is founded throughout on MS. place here for a single observation to show a little proof of Metternich's trustworthiness. The Chancellor wrote in 1857, after reading the fifteenth volume of Thiers's "Consulate and Empire," an account of his relations with the French statesman in the tone of a very great and mighty lord, who had condescended, perhaps once or twice, to receive the little ex-journalist, but had no further dealings with him. Thiers had put twelve questions to him in Brussels, in 1850, which he had answered, but their conversation was confined to the years 18091810. (See this account in the " Papers," vol. 1. pp. 254, 255.) Now that famous Dresden interview of the year 1813 is contained in the sixteenth volume of the Consulate and Empire,

which appeared simultaneously with the fifteenth in the year 1857. In it Thiers states, in the most distinct manner, that Metternich had communicated to him an outline of that interview. This statement Metternich, who was then still alive, and indeed writing the account mentioned at that very time, has not publicly denied; and Thiers's version agrees so entirely, with the exception of some little points, with the Memorandum of 1820, published by Helfert, as well as with the narrative written in 1829 (published in the work before us), that since nobody could know the import of that conversation except Metternich, the Chancellor, in his account of the year 1857, could have simply-not told the truth. That Thiers received other communications from Metternich after 1850 appears from the remark of the editor on the Mission of Ottenfels to Basle," vol. 1. p. 268. This example may suffice to explain and justify certain severities in our judgment of the Chancellor.

materials, is in no wise superseded by this new publication, and I refer to this book once for all, as also to A. Springer's much older character of Metternich, although I cannot agree with all judgments of either historian, especially not, as will appear, with Springer's. As far as things personal are concerned, regarding which both the author and the editor of the work before us are very reserved, the inadvertent expressions of Talleyrand, Marmont, Humboldt, and other contemporaries, and, above all, Gentz's Diary, Hormayr's Lebensbilder, and Varnhagen's Memorabilia must be consulted, if we are to form a correct idea of the Chancellor's figure.

Notwithstanding all this, the present publication is very valuable. For a history of the time it can only be used under condition of careful comparison with other sources. For the character of the man it is invaluable, because it gives him to us speaking without interruption for nine hundred pages long. And although the whole book as yet treats only of the period up to the year 1815, we get to hear him in the most various ages of life, now as a stripling of twenty, now as a young man in the thick of affairs, and just out of the stir of battle, and now as a discreet, self-satisfied old man, who sets out the history of his life and paints himself in the way he would like posterity to see him. A foolish and vain undertaking, we may say at the outset : foolish, because Metternich as he was is much more interesting than Metternich as he would like to be; vain, because with all his trouble he has entirely failed to present himself otherwise than as he was. If the first half of the book gives us the opportunity of learning to know the old author, the second puts the means in our hand of making the acquaintance of the young diplomatist, and all will believe my word when I say that the diplomatist was in Metternich more important than the author, the youth more interesting than the old man. But since the Prince Chancellor, in a dilettante way, laid so much stress on his literary talent, let us devote a little attention to the author before we speak of the statesman; all the more because the author oftentimes, and certainly without meaning it, explains the statesman, but especially because he