On the 21st of December, 1872, H.M.S. Challenger, an eighteen gun corvette, of 2,000 tons burden, sailed from Portsmouth harbour for a three, or perhaps four, years’ cruise.  No man-of-war ever left that famous port before with so singular an equipment.  Two of the eighteen sixty-eight pounders of the Challenger’s armament remained to enable her to speak with effect to sea-rovers, haply devoid of any respect for science, in the remote seas for which she is bound; but the main-deck was, for the most part, stripped of its war-like gear, and fitted up with physical, chemical, and biological laboratories; Photography had its dark cabin; while apparatus for dredging, trawling, and sounding; for photometers and for thermometers, filled the space formerly occupied by guns and gun-tackle, pistols and cutlasses.

The crew of the Challenger match her fittings.  Captain Nares, his officers and men, are ready to look after the interests of hydrography, work the ship, and, if need be, fight her as seamen should; while there is a staff of scientific civilians, under the general direction of Dr. Wyville Thomson, F.R.S. (Professor of Natural History in Edinburgh University by rights, but at present detached for duty in partibus), whose business it is to turn all the wonderfully packed stores of appliances to account, and to accumulate, before the ship returns to England, such additions to natural knowledge as shall justify the labour and cost involved in the fitting out and maintenance of the expedition.

Under the able and zealous superintendence of the Hydrographer, Admiral Richards, every precaution which experience and forethought could devise has been taken to provide the expedition with the material conditions of success; and it would seem as if nothing short of wreck or pestilence, both most improbable contingencies, could prevent the Challenger from doing splendid work, and opening up a new era in the history of scientific voyages.

The dispatch of this expedition is the culmination of a series of such enterprises, gradually increasing in magnitude and importance, which the Admiralty, greatly to its credit, has carried out for some years past; and the history of which is given by Dr. Wyville Thomson in the beautifully illustrated volume entitled “The Depths of the Sea,” published since his departure.

“In the spring of the year 1868, my friend Dr. W.B.  Carpenter, at that time one of the Vice-Presidents of the Royal Society, was with me in Ireland, where we were working out together the structure and development of the Crinoids.  I had long previously had a profound conviction that the land of promise for the naturalist, the only remaining region where there were endless novelties of extraordinary interest ready to the hand which had the means of gathering them, was the bottom of the deep sea.  I had even had a glimpse of some of these treasures, for I had seen, the year before, with Prof.  Sars, the forms which I have