“There is probably no latitude between that of Spitzbergen and Victoria Land, where some of the species of either country do not exist:  Iceland, Britain, the Mediterranean Sea, North and South America, and the South Sea Islands, all possess Antarctic Diatomaceoe.  The silicious coats of species only known living in the waters of the South Polar Ocean, have, during past ages, contributed to the formation of rocks; and thus they outlive several successive creations of organized beings.  The phonolite stones of the Rhine, and the Tripoli stone, contain species identical with what are now contributing to form a sedimentary deposit (and perhaps, at some future period, a bed of rock) extending in one continuous stratum for 400 measured miles.  I allude to the shores of the Victoria Barrier, along whose coast the soundings examined were invariably charged with diatomaceous remains, constituting a bank which stretches 200 miles north from the base of Victoria Barrier, while the average depth of water above it is 300 fathoms, or 1,800 feet.  Again, some of the Antarctic species have been detected floating in the atmosphere which overhangs the wide ocean between Africa and America.  The knowledge of this marvellous fact we owe to Mr. Darwin, who, when he was at sea off the Cape de Verd Islands, collected an impalpable powder which fell on Captain Fitzroy’s ship.  He transmitted this dust to Ehrenberg, who ascertained it to consist of the silicious coats, chiefly of American Diatomaceoe, which were being wafted through the upper region of the air, when some meteorological phenomena checked them in their course and deposited them on the ship and surface of the ocean.

“The existence of the remains of many species of this order (and amongst them some Antarctic ones) in the volcanic ashes, pumice, and scoriae of active and extinct volcanoes (those of the Mediterranean Sea and Ascension Island, for instance) is a fact bearing immediately upon the present subject.  Mount Erebus, a volcano 12,400 feet high, of the first class in dimensions and energetic action, rises at once from the ocean in the seventy-eighth degree of south latitude, and abreast of the Diatomaceoe bank, which reposes in part on its base.  Hence it may not appear preposterous to conclude that, as Vesuvius receives the waters of the Mediterranean, with its fish, to eject them by its crater, so the subterranean and subaqueous forces which maintain Mount Erebus in activity may occasionally receive organic matter from the bank, and disgorge it, together with those volcanic products, ashes and pumice.

“Along the shores of Graham’s Land and the South Shetland Islands, we have a parallel combination of igneous and aqueous action, accompanied with an equally copious supply of Diatomaceoe.  In the Gulf of Erebus and Terror, fifteen degrees north of Victoria Land, and placed on the opposite side of the globe, the soundings were of a similar nature with those of the Victoria Land and Barrier, and the sea and ice as full of Diatomaceoe.  This was not only proved by the deep sea lead, but by the examination of bergs which, once stranded, had floated off and become reversed, exposing an accumulation of white friable mud frozen to their bases, which abounded with these vegetable remains.”