2 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. [cHar. 1. 
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culties in the way of any attempt at investigation. 
Even men of science seemed to share this idea, for 
they gave little heed to the apparently well-authenti- 
cated instances of animals, comparatively high in the 
scale of life, having been brought up on sounding 
lines from great depths, and welcomed any suggestion 
of the animals having got entangled when swimming 
on the surface, or of carelessness on the part of the 
observers. And this was strange, for every other 
question in Physical’ Geography had been investi- 
gated by scientific men with consummate patience 
and energy. Every gap in the noble little army of 
martyrs striving to extend the boundaries of know- 
ledge in the wilds of Australia, on the Zambesi, 
or towards the North or South Pole, was struggled 
for by earnest volunteers, and still the great ocean 
slumbering beneath the moon covered a region 
apparently as inaccessible to man as the ‘mare 
serenitatis.’ 
A few years ago the bottom of the sea was required 
for the purpose of telegraphic communication, and 
practical men mapped out the bed of the North 
Atlantic, and devised ingenious methods of ascertain- 
ing the nature of the material covering the bottom. 
They laid a telegraphic cable across it, and the 
cable got broken and they went back to the spot and 
fished up the end of it easily, from a depth of nearly 
two miles. 
It had long been a question with naturalists whether 
it might not be possible to dredge the bottom of the 
sea in the ordinary way, and to send down water- 
bottles and registering instruments to settle finally 
the question of a ‘zero of animal life,’ and to deter- 
