Thalassa. By John James Wild. (Ward and Co.) —This is
one of the works which embody some of the results of the expedition under- taken by H.M.S. ' Challenger.' We believe the popular notion of the deep-sea bottom is that it resembles in its chief features the appearance of the land, having its mountains and valleys, its terraces, ravines, and plateaux. Geologists have conjectured—from inferences drawn, it is true, from theory, but a theory well-established—that the popular notion is a delusion, and that there is a striking difference between the character of the ocean basins and the land surface, but it has been left for the Challenger' expedition to fully establish the truth of this conjecture. The fact is, the large ocean basins consist for the most part, of extensive plateaux, upon which are being deposited the matter which will form the geological strata of a future continent. Mr. Wild has written an interesting account of the methods employed and the data obtained by the scientific staff, devoting particular attention to the temperature of the ocean, and has illustrated this part of his work by a series of numerous and well-executed maps. The inferences he draws are sound and important contributions to science ; perhaps the one most so is, that the absence of organic remains in a for- mation is not of itself an indication of the antiquity of the deposit. The dredge-net never brought up any remains of those large marine animals of which one would imagine some parts of the sea to be a vast graveyard. This fact alone is of the utmost importance to geologists, who may have to reconsider some of their conclusions, and is certainly a point in favour of the anti-evolutionists.
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