The Prince of Monaco, who is devoted to oceanography and
has had Much practical experience as a whaler, delivered a lecture at the Royal Institution on Friday week which is full of points of interest for the unlearned. The Prince thinks he can prove that the vast spaces of ocean between the surface and the extreme depths are haunted by the great and terrible cephalopods on which certain species of whales depend for food, and with which they wage perpetual, and not always quite successful, war. These creatures cannot, owing to their organisation, rise into spaces illuminated by light, and their very existence has often been denied. That suggests, though the Prince did not mention it, that if the hunters succeed, as they are succeeding, in driving the whales from accessible waters, the numbers of these horrible creatures on which they live, and probably their size also, must increase. He had himself, in the course of his experiments, discovered many new species of cephalopods, "some of gigantic size." The whole lecture is most interesting ; but what a curious fact it is that the proprietors of a gaming-table on the Mediterranean should unintentionally contribute so largely to the progress of ichthyological science.
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