suggests many beautiful fancies, some touching thoughts, and a few useful ideas; and among these last are found reasons for the conjecture that the gutta percha or other insulating material in which the conducting wires of the sub-Atlantic telegraph and other deep-sea lines are incased, becomes, when lodged beyond a certain depth, impervious to the powers of decay; that, with the weight of the sea upon them, the destructive agents which are so busy upon organic matter in the air and near the surface cannot find room for play. Curious that destruction and decay should be imprisoned and rendered inoperative at the bottom of the great deep!
616. Specimens of the three oceans all tell the same story.—Specimens of the "ooze and bottom of the sea" have also been obtained by the ingenuity of Brooke from the depth of 2700 fathoms in the North Pacific, and examined by Professor Bailey.[1] We have now had specimens from the bottom of "blue water" in the narrow Coral Sea, the broad Pacific, and the long Atlantic, and they all tell the same story, namely, that the bed of the ocean is a vast cemetery. The ocean's bed has been found everywhere, wherever Brooke's sounding-rod has touched, to be soft, consisting almost entirely of the remains of infusoria. The Gulf Stream has literally strewed the bottom of the Atlantic with these microscopic shells; for the Coast Survey has caught up the same infusoria in the Gulf of Mexico and at the bottom of the Gulf Stream off the shores of the
- ↑ "West Point, N, Y, January 29, 1856.
"My dear Sir,—I have examined with much pleasure the highly interesting specimens collected by Lieutenant Brooke, of the United States Navy, which you kindly sent me for microscopic analysis, and I will now briefly report to you the results of general interest which I have obtained, leaving the enumeration of the organic contents and the description of new species for a
to account for their being afloat so far out at sea; but how often are frogs and fishes found under circumstances and in conditions which cannot be accounted for! Their coming out of the sea adherent to the line proves nothing. But the creature had Globigerina-shells in its stomach; therefore, say the biotics, these shells must also have lived at the depth of 1260 fathoms. Not so: wherever the star-fish lived, he must have food, and he could collect these mites of things as well near the top as the bottom of the sea. Its anatomical structure, and the brilliancy of its colour—red and pink—seem to prove the anti-biotic view quite as much as the other circumstances of the case prove the biotic. Life in the depths of the sea is an interesting question, and the plan which seems most capable of settling it has been already suggested, wide § 613.
