Sea at a greater depth than in the open culiarity of Temperature, either in the Ocean; and, if so, what is the greatest Ocean or in Inland Seas, will prove to depth at which they there exist. This be explicable by attention to these conquestion has obviously a most important ditions, the degree of seclusion of the bearing on the interpretation of many area from the Polar flow, and the lowest Geological phenomena; for if the limitation of the depth of living reef-builders be really thermometric, instead of bathymetric, so that where secluded from the General Oceanic Circulation they can grow up from a greater depth than in the Oceanic area, it is obvious that such a limitation cannot be rightly assumed in regard to the Coral Growths of former Epochs. winter temperature of the surface. Thus, in the Celebez Sea, the depth of which has lately been found by Captain Chimmo to be nearly 2700 fathoms, the bottom temperature was found to be 38 1-2°; whilst at a less depth in the Indian Ocean, a little to the west of Sumatra, a bottom-temperature of 32° was met with. A glance at the Map will show that whilst the latter station is in the direct course of the bottom-flow of Antarctic water towards the Equator, this flow could only reach the former by going a long way round. It is curious to see how, in another place, an inflow of colder water, at a limited depth, modifies the temperature of an Inland Sea. Between the north- The peculiarities of Inland Seas in reeastern portion of Borneo and Mindanao gard to Temperature seem to have a (the southernmost of the Philippine much more potent influence on Animal group) there is an area, called the Sulu life than would at first be apparent. I Sea, which is really far more completely went to the Mediterranean with the full enclosed than appears on the Map; for expectation of finding its depths tenanted the islands that lie at intervals between by the like varied and abundant Fauna its two principal boundaries are so con-that we had met with at corresponding nected by intervening reefs, which do not depths in the Atlantic; and considering rise to the surface, that this Sulu Sea has that the existence of this Sea can be clearonly a very superficial and limited com- ly traced back through the whole Tertiamunication with either the China Sea, or ry period, I expected to find in this fauna the Celebez Sea. Notwithstanding this the like representation of the early Terenclosure, its depth is very great, reach- tiaries, that the fauna of the deep Atlantic ing to 1600 fathoms; and its Tempera- had shown of the Cretaceous. What, ture-phenomena present the same re- then, was my disappointment at finding markable contrast with the China Sea the dredge come up, time after time, from outside, as do those of the Mediterranean depths ranging between 300 and 1500 with the Atlantic. For the surface-tem- fathoms, laden with a barren mud; the 'petature of both being nearly the same most careful examination of which re(83 and 84°), and the reduction to 50° vealed not a single living organism, and being shown at nearly the same depth only a few fragments of dead shells and (about 300 fathoms), the temperature of corals, large enough to be recognizable the Sulu Sea from that plane to the bot- as such, which had obviously drifted from tom remains uniform, whilst that of the some other locality. The idea of the China Sea continues to descend, until 37° nearly azoic condition of the deeper part is reached at 670 fathoms, below which it of the Mediterranean, to which I was undergoes little further reduction, even thus led, having been confirmed by the to a depth of 1550 fathoms. That the results of Oscar Schmidt's dredgings in uniform temperature of the Sulu Sea the Adriatic, the question arises, from about 300 fathoms downwards to what is this condition due? I was in the 1600, is lower than that of the Mediter- first instance disposed to attribute it to ranean by about four or five degrees, not- the turbid condition of the bottom-water, withstanding that it is so much nearer the which is charged (as I was able to Equator that its surface-temperature prove by observation) with extremely must be considerably higher all through fine sedimentary particles, whose slow the to year, is obviously due to the admis- settling-down forms the mud of the botsion of outside-water, which has been tom. These seem to be chiefly derived, cooled by the Polar flow, through passages in the Eastern basin, from the Nile; and between its bounding reefs and islands; in the Western basin, from the Rhone: and we might fix the probable depth of those passages at about 250 fathoms. It seems probable that every local pe the coarser particles in each case settling down near the mouths of those rivers, whilst the finer are diffused through the whole mass of Mediterranean water, grav-1 and 40; even this large proportion of itating very slowly to the depths of its Carbonic Acid not appearing prejudicial basin. to the life of the Marine Invertebrata, so long as Oxygen was present in sufficient proportion. It may be interesting to note, that it is to this diffusion, experimentally proved on the large scale by the admixture of mud with the saline deposit of the boilers of steam-ships voyaging in the Mediterranean, and on the small by Professor Tyndall's electric-light test, - that the paculiar blueness of the waters of the Mediterranean is due. The case is precisely paralleled by that of the Lake of Geneva, through which the Upper Rhone flows, depositing near its entrance the coarser particles of sediment, and diffusing the finer through the entire waters of the lake, to which they impart a corresponding blueness. It is well known that a muddy state of the bottom-water is unfavourable to the presence of Animal life; and it has been particularly noted by Dana, that where such a sediment brought down by a current is diffused over a part of a bed of living Coral, it kills the animals of that part. Moreover, I learned at Malta that in the beds which yield the extremely fine-grained stone which is used for delicate carvings, scarcely any fossils are found save sharks' teeth; whilst in the coarse-grained beds of the same formation, fossils are abundant; and as the former may be regarded as the product of a slow deposit in the deep sea, so may the latter be considered as shore-beds. Further, I have been informed by Professor Duncan, that in the Fleisch of the Alps, which shows in some parts a thickness of several thousand feet, and which is composed of a very fine sedimentary material, there is an almost entire absence of Organic remains. There is, however, another condition of the bottom-water of the Mediterranean, which is not less unfavourable than its turbidity - probably yet more so-to the existence of Animal life in its depths; namely, the deficiency of Oxygen produced by the slow decomposition of the organic matter brought down by its great rivers. According to the determination which I made in my second visit to the Mediterranean in 1871, the gases boiled-off from water brought up from great depths contained only about 5 per cent. of Oxygen and 35 per cent. of Nitrogen, the remaining 60 per cent. being Carbonic Acid. Now in gases boiled-off from the deep water of the Atlantic, the average percentage of Oxygen was about 20, while that of Carbonic Acid was between 30 The rationale of both these conditions seems obviously the same; namely, that in consequence of the uniformity of Temperature of the whole mass of Mediterranean water below the surface-stratum of 200 fathoms (which alone will be disturbed by Wind, or be affected by the influx of Rivers and of the Gibraltar current), there is no Thermal_Circulation; the whole contents of the deeper part of this immense basin being thus in an absolutely stagnant condition. If the doctrine of a Vertical Oceanic Circulation be true, every drop of Ocean-water is brought in its turn to the surface, where it can get rid of its Carbonic Acid, and take in a fresh supply of Oxygen. But as the density of the surface-stratum of the Mediterranean is never rendered greater by reduction of Temperature, than that of the mass of water it overlies, there is no agency capable of producing any interchange; the bottom-water charged with the slowly-gravitating sediment is never disturbed; and the Organic matter contained in that sediment consumes its Oxygen so much more rapidly than it can be supplied from above by diffusion through the vast column of superincumbent water, that nearly the whole of it is converted into Carbonic Acid, scarcely any being left for the support of Animal Life. These considerations, then, seem fully adequate to account for the paucity of Life in the deeper part of the Mediterranean basin; and they will, of course, equally apply to the case of any other Inland Sea, so far as the same conditions apply. And it is not a little interesting to find that my old friend and fellow-student Edward Forbes was perfectly correct as to the limitation of Animal Life — so far as regards the Ægean Sea, in which his own researches were prosecuted to a depth of about 300 fathoms; the error, which was rather that of others than his own, being in the supposition that this limitation applies equally to the great Oceanbasins, past as well as present. The researches in which it has been my privilege to bear a part, have shown that as regards the latter there is probably no Bathymetrical limit to Animal Life; while the results of my inquiries into the influence of the Physical Conditions of the Mediterranean in limiting the bathy metrical diffusion of its Fauna, will not,, Owing to its situation, that port escaped I ventu re to hope, be without their use From The Pall Mall Gazette. the worst extremities of the prevailing scarcity; but still its streets were haunted by men, women, and children in the last stage of emaciation from hunger. As the traveller advanced inland, however, the evidences of the sufferings of the population became more numerous and appalling. At Kazeroon, between Bushire and Shiraz, Mr. Brittlebank was witness of a scene SOME interesting information respect the description of which, as illustrating ing the internal condition of Persia in the state of the country we may perhaps be the early part of last year is furnished by permitted to quote: "The morning af the narrative of Mr. Brittlebank's travels ter our arrival à crowd of emaciated natives in that country. Mr. Brittlebank left poured into the yard of the station. Some Southampton on January 4, and landing sat on their heels, some propped themat Ceylon passed rapidly thence to Ma- selves up against the wall, others lay dras, and so on to Bombay. There he wearily at full length on the ground. embarked for the Persian Gulf, and call- They numbered in all-men, women, ing by the way at Kurrachee, Muscat, and children a couple of hundred. Bunder Abbas, and Linga, reached Bu- They were all in rags or more than halfshire on the morning of March 28, having naked, and the effluvium from them was thus accomplished this circuitous journey so fœtid that, although standing on the in less than three months by a full week. top of the station, about twelve or fourOn the way Mr. Brittlebank tells us that teen yards off, I could scarcely bear it. every one acquainted with Persia with They were of all ages; but their sufferwhom he came in contact attempted to ings seemed to have told most on the dissuade him from his purpose. They children. The girls looked like hags, represented to him that the country was the boys like aged dwarfs. Two or three suffering in the agonies of a most fearful Persian 'gholams '- men who, when the famine, that its society was disorganized, telegraphic communication is interrupted, and its Government without power to go down the line until they discover the afford protection; that consequently, place at fault-stood at the gate in order even if he should be fortunate enough to that the very poor and starving might escape pestilence and the hand of vio-alone enter. I could not make out what lence, he would yet be unable to obtain test they applied to discriminate between the accomodation necessary to complete the famished and half-famished, but I his journey. Mr. Brittlebank's courage, noticed that they rejected very miserable however, was not to be shaken, and the looking women who supplicated for adresult proved that the picture thus drawn mission. Another 'gholam' assisted the beforehand of the perils he would have Armenian in distributing the dates, the to encounter was overwrought. Though form in which the relief was given. When the state of Persia was in an extreme de- the dates were brought in, every-device gree deplorable, outward order was tol- was resorted to in order to obtain a double erably well preserved, and so far from Gov- supply; and the crowd sometimes became ernment being without power, every per- so wild that the trays on which the fruit was son in authority was obeyed with the most placed were upset, and what might in truth slavish submissiveness. Nor was there be termed a life-and-death fight was fought anywhere, even where the roadside was over it. The distribution over, the undotted with the bodies of those dead of happy beings got back as they best could hunger, an attempt made to procure food to their hovels to pine and suffer, susby force, or to molest the foreign travel-tained only by the hope of a future dole ler. A youth fresh from Eton, he passed at the station." The traveller was, howfrom Bushire to the coast of the Caspian ever, only now entering upon the real Sea, attended through the most distressed famine region. Up to Shiraz he found provinces by only a single native servant, no serious difficulty in obtaining horses, yet he was never once molested. But but at that town he was unable to buy a though the warnings he received were single beast likely to live, and was forced, thus exaggerated, respecting the horrors therefore, to travel thenceforwards on of the famine there was no exaggeration. hired horses, and even these were little His first walk through Bushire was more than skin and bone from want of sufficient to satisfy him on that point. food. Corpses by the wayside, black and The swollen, now became more and more fre- | kinds of birds really celebrate festivities quent on each successive day. Just be- very closely approaching to our wedding fore reaching Ispahan, on riding into a fêtes, balls, and garden parties, in places caravanserai one night, "a faint gust of carefully decorated and arranged by the wind brought with it the smells of a birds for the purpose of social gathercharnel-house. On looking round I no-ings, and which are not used for their acticed a woman lying on her face. She tual dwelling-places. The best evidence, was dead and perfectly naked, the few says Mr. Darwin, of a taste for the beaugarments which she was accustomed to tiful "is afforded by the three genera of wear having been taken by some other Australian bower-birds." "Their bowpoor creature starving in the chilly night. ers where the sexes congregate and play Out of the sockets of her eyes and mouth strange antics" [? at all stranger than our a black and noisome fluid was oozing, and waltzes and quadrilles] "are differently the side of her face and breast were constructed; but what most concerns us gnawed away. Two famished-looking is that they are decorated in a different men and a woman were seated a few yards manner by the different species. off glaring at the body with wolfish eyes. satin bower-bird collects gaily-coloured A horrible suspicion seized me. I articles, such as the blue tail-feathers of would not believe, and yet I could not parrakeets, bleached bones and shells, doubt it, so hungry and ravenous were which it sticks between the twigs, or artheir looks. Passing them, and stepping ranges at the entrance. Mr. Gould over two more dead bodies, I came to found in one bower a neatly-worked the stable on the right side of the yard. stone tomahawk and a slip of blue cotI entered it, and after waiting till my eyes ton, evidently procured from a native enbecame accustomed to the darkness, dis- campment. These objects are contincovered on the one side the dead body of ually rearranged and carried about by a man, and on the other side, close to the birds while at play. The bower of the wall, a woman and a child. The wo- the spotted bower-bird is beautifully man was dead, the child just breathed. lined with tall grasses, so disposed that I hastened with it into the air, hoping the heads nearly meet, and the decorathat life might still be preserved in it. It tions are very profuse. Round stones was too late." From Ispahan to the cap- are used to keep the grass-stems in their ital the suffering seemed, if possible, to proper places, and to make divergent grow more intense and universal. But paths leading to the bower. The stones once Teheran was passed, although there and shells are often brought from a great was still distress, it did not present the distance. The regent-bird, as described terrible form witnessed amid the barren by Mr. Ramsay, ornaments its short bowmountains and sandy salt plains of the er with bleached land-shells belonging to centre of the kingdom. five or six species, and 'with berries of various colours, blue, red, and black, which give it, when fresh, a very pretty appearance. Besides these, there were several newly-picked leaves and young shoots of a pinkish colour, the whole showing a decided taste for the beautiful.' Well may Mr. Gould say, 'these highly-decorated halls of assembly must be regarded as the most wonderful instances of bird architecture yet discovered;' and the taste, we see, of the several species certainly differs." You could not have distincter evidence in a lady's salon carefully decorated with flowers, either of her taste for the beautiful, or of the deliberate subordination of that taste to social purposes, than we have here of the same qualities in birds. Mr. Leith Adams in his paper hardly refers, as we have already observed, to this remarkable class of facts at all only pointing out that the obvious preference for gaily-coloured plumage on the part of From The Spectator. THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS OF BIRDS. THE Popular Science Review for July contains some interesting but too brief remarks by Mr. Leith Adams on the "Mental Powers of Birds," which it is interesting to define specifically as distinguished from the mental powers of other animals of the higher order of sagacity. This we will briefly do. First, it would appear from Mr. Darwin's discussions though Mr. Leith Adams hardly refers to them, — that none of the lower orders of creatures have so keen an appreciation of beauty as many kinds of birds, and certainly that none turn this taste for beauty so deliberately to the purpose of social amusement. That great naturalist has described how some range for the first time, having been previously accustomed only to the fowlingpiece, and kept just outside the two thousand yards' range, or whatever range it was, retaining their composure the wonderful accuracy of the travelling birds in striking the exact point for which they are bound, of which Mr. Leith Adams gives us wonderful illustrations, is a still greater proof of the same power. Mr. Adams tells us of swifts which, after eight months' absence in the South, at a distance of some 1,800 or 1,900 miles, return not merely to the same region, but to the same nests, which they had deserted, and that, too, year after year, the females clearly implies a genuine taste for the beautiful in birds, which is, of course, true, but is not nearly as good evidence of a distinct intellectual development on this point, as the elaborate decoration of their bowers by birds perfectly at that distance. We suppose for festive purposes. The mere preference for gay colours may be unconscious and purely instinctive, but when a bird looks out for bleached land-shells and tall grasses to ornament its reception room, and fetches round stones to "fix" the grasses in their proper place, and then uses the hall thus provided only for festive social purposes, you can hardly deny such birds either the powers or the tastes of landscape gardeners and ball givers. And we fancy this kind of deliberate taste for the beautiful, and the beautiful in subordination to social purposes, is confined among the lower aniimals to birds; and as regards the social purposes, to a very few orders of birds. A great many birds seem to have more appreciation of beauty of colour than almost any other class of animals, but only in a few species has it risen to the point of a really decorative social art. We may gather from this that in the bird the perception of harmony is of a very high kind, and this evidently applies to sound as well as colour. No creatures utter sounds so full of beauty, or display such wonderful qualifications for imitating the beautiful sounds they hear. Must we not say, then, that the bird has, in more force than any other species of the lower animals, the perception of harmony in forms, colours, and sounds, and the further consciousness of the fascination such harmony has for its own species, and the enhancement it lends to social enjoyments. the individuals having been marked so that there could be no mistake as to their identity, unless indeed there be such creatures as "claimants" to abandoned nests even in the ornithological world. Again, the delicate adaptation of the power of geometrical measurement to the welfare of its species, seems to be shown by the weaver-bird of India, which hangs its "elaborately-constructed, purse-shaped nest ""from the tops of branches overhanging deep wells," in order to render it particularly difficult for enemies to get at the nest without running a great risk of falling into the well. From Land and Water. HIPPOPOTAMI FIGHTING IN THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. dens for twenty-three years. Obesh was quietly munching his breakfast of grass in the outside den, when at a given signal the portcullis of the mother's den was gradually raised, and the two heads appeared gazing out with a most comical expression. Seeing his wife, the old man left off munching his grass, grinned a ghastly grin, and he loudly trumpeted "Umph," " Umph," "Umph." By the kindness of Mr. Bartlett, I have had the good fortune to be present on the occasion when the little Hippopotamus, Guy Fawkes-who is now eight months Another great mental quality which old was introduced to his disagreeable birds seem to have in excess of other old father, Obesh, a resident in the garanimals, is a very fine calculation of distance, and this, too, in direct subordination to their own well-being. It has been shown again and again, and Mr. Leith Adams refers to some facts in support of it in this essay,- that as new weapons of offence are invented many species of birds narrowly observe the range of the new bows or guns, and keep out of range, not even troubling themselves to go at all farther than is necessary to be out of range. Quite recently we have read, though we cannot verify the reference at present, of some birds which adapted themselves within a few days to the increased range of the rifle, directly after they had learned its --- 66 Little Guy Fawkes then came forward from behind his mother, with the action and stiffness of a pointer when he has discovered a covey of birds: gradually and slowly he went up to his father, and their outstretched noses were just touching, when the old woman sounded the |