Short Review of the Results of the international Investigations (mostly Norwegian and Danish)

Appendix G of Rapport et process-verbaux des reunions (RPVR) Vol. 3

It is self-evident that tlie common work of marine investigation, in which the North- Enropean nations have joined, must take its commencement from what we already know con­cerning the sea and the life of the sea. From the beginning therefore, the investigations have been so instituted as to use and further the methods and results which existing institutions have already worked out in this iield of enquiry. The international work is so closely bound to these' results that it is often impossible, in the following review of the later work of the last two years, to show what comes from the present and what from the earlier investigations ; moreover, it was to some extent the same naturalists who conducted the work formerly as at present. We have thought it better accordingly, for the sake of continuity and the deeper inter­relations of the work, to keep chiefly to the facts and we have laid less weight on what both series of investigations have obtained separately. We would point out however, that the historical development is such, that the new and extended international investigations are in all essentials based on the results achieved by the earlier; the aim of both is the same and the means are of the same kind, but the new means regarded from the purely quantitative standpoint are greater. We have every reason to expect that the results will likewise be greater. The following report will perhaps confirm this view even though all the material is far from having been worked out.