THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 79 
so absurd as it looks at first sight—namely, that, 
as Dr. Wyville Thomson puts it, picturesquely 
enough, “in going down the sea water became, 
under the pressure, gradually heavier and heavier, 
and that all the loose things floated at different 
levels, according to their specific weight,—skele- 
tons of men, anchors and shot and cannon, and 
last of all the broad gold pieces lost in the wreck 
of many a galleon off the Spanish Main; the whole 
forming a kind of ‘false bottom’ to the ocean, be- 
neath which there lay all the depth of clear still 
water, which was heavier than molten gold.” 
The facts are; first that water, being all but in- 
compressible, is hardly any heavier, and just as 
liquid, at the greatest depth, than at the surface; 
and that therefore animals can move as freely in it 
in deep as in shallow water; and next, that as the 
fluids inside the body of a sea animal must be at 
the same pressure as that of the water outside it, 
the two pressures must balance each other; and the 
body, instead of being crushed in, may be uncon- 
scious that it is living under a weight of two or 
