as an important thing, and rightly so. Equally
important is it, in bringing the physical
geography of the sea within the domains of science,
to map out the bottom of the ocean, so as to
show the depressions of the solid parts of the
earth's crust there, below the sea-level.
Captain Maury has attempted such a map. The
bottom of the Atlantic is given with as much
accuracy as the best geographers have attained
in showing, on maps, the elevations above the
sea-level of the interior either of Africa or
Australia. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico
are held in a basin about a mile deep in the
deepest part. Of the North Atlantic the deepest
part is probably somewhere between the
Bermudas and the Grand Banks; but how deep it
may be, yet remains for the cannon-ball and
sounding-line to determine.

"What is the use of these deep-sea soundings?"
is a question that often occurs; and it
is as difficult to be answered off-hand as Franklin's
question, " What is the use of a new-born
babe?" Every physical fact, every expression
of nature, every feature of the earth, is
interesting and instructive. Until we get hold of
a group of physical facts, we do not know what
bearing they may have on man's utilitarian
purposes. Already we are obtaining practical
answers to the question as to the use of deep-
sea soundings, in the schemes for submarine
telegraphs across the Atlantic. There is at the
bottom of this sea, between Cape Race in
Newfoundland and Cape Clear in Ireland, a remarkable
steppe, which is already known as the
telegraphic plateau, and has already been made
famous by the attempts to run a telegraphic
cable across the ocean upon it. Whether
messages can ever be successfully sent, in a
commercial sense, through such a continuous
submarine wire is by no means certain; but
that the wires of 1858 so soon ceased to pass
any current at all, was no doubt owing to the
fact that the cable was constructed upon
erroneous principles. Its projectors, in planning its
construction, did not, unfortunately, avail
themselves of the light which deep-sea soundings had
cast upon the bed of the ocean.

It was upon this plateau that Lieutenant
Brooke's sounding apparatus brought up its
first trophies from the bottom of the sea.
Nearly all the specimens belong to the animal,
few to the mineral or vegetable kingdom. The
late Professor Bailey, of West Point, with his
microscope, could detect scarcely a single
particle of sand or gravel among these little mites
of shells, many of them quite perfect, fished up
from the great telegraphic plateau. The
inference is that there, if anywhere, the waters of
the sea are at rest. There was not motion
enough to abrade these very delicate organisms,
nor current enough to sweep them about and
mix up with them a grain of the finest sand nor
the smallest particle of gravel torn from the
loose beds of débris that here and there strew
the bottom of the sea. This plateau is not too
deep for the wire to sink down and rest upon,
yet it is not so shallow that currents, or
icebergs, or any abrading force, can derange the
wire after once it is lodged there.

Brooke's lead and the microscope, therefore,
teach us to regard the ocean in a new light. Its
bosom, which so teems with animal life, its
face, upon which time writes no wrinkles, are,
it would now seem, as obedient to the great law
of change as any other department of nature.

Henceforward, we must view the surface of
the sea as a nursery teeming with nascent
organism; its depths as the cemetery for
families of living creatures that outnumber the
sands in multitude. Where there is a nursery,
hard by will be found a graveyard; such
is the condition of the world. But it never
before occurred to us to consider the
surface of the sea as one wide nursery, its every
ripple a cradle, and its bottom one vast burial-
place. Now, the space occupied by the different
families of animals and their remains seems to
be inversely as the size of the individual. The
smaller the animal, the greater space occupied
by its remains. Take the elephant and his
remains, or a microscopic animal and his, and
compare them. The graveyard holding the
remains of the coral insect is larger than the
graveyard that would hold those of the elephant.

The study of these sunless treasures, recovered
with so much ingenuity from the bottom of the
sea, conducts us to the very chambers of the
deep. Our investigations go to show that the
roaring waves and the mightiest billows of the
ocean, repose, not upon hard or troubled beds,
but upon cushions of still water; that, everywhere
at the bottom of the deep sea the solid
ribs of the earth are protected, as with a
garment, from the abrading action of its currents;
that, the cradle of its restless waves is lined
by a stratum of water at rest, or so nearly at
rest, that it can neither wear nor move the
lightest bit of drift that once lodges there.

The uniform appearance of these microscopic
shells, and the almost total absence among
them of any sediment from the sea or foreign
matter, suggest most forcibly the idea of perfect
repose at the bottom of the deep sea. Some of
the specimens are as pure and as free from sea-
sand, as the fresh-fallen snow-flake is from the
dust of the earth. Indeed, these soundings
almost prove that the sea, like the snow-cloud
with its flakes in a calm, is always letting fall
upon its bed showers of these minute shells;
and we may readily imagine that the wrecks
which strew its bottom are, in the process of
ages, hidden under this fleecy covering,
presenting the rounded appearance which is seen
over the body of the traveller who has perished
in the snowstorm. The ocean, especially within
and near the tropics, swarms with life. The
remains of its myriads of moving things are
conveyed by currents, and scattered and lodged
in the course of time all over its bottom. This
process, continued for ages, has covered the
depths of the ocean as with a mantle, consisting
of organisms as delicate as hoar-frost, and as
light in the water as down is in the air.

The tooth of running water is very sharp.