212 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



ical facts that Brooke's apparatus fished up from the bottom of the 

 deep sea. Bailey, with his microscope {^ 448), could not detect 

 a 'single particle of sand or gravel among these little mites of 

 shells. They were from the great telegraphic plateau (^ 446), 

 and the inference is that there, if any where, the waters of the sea 

 are at rest. There w^as not motion enough there 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 debris that here and 

 there strew the bottom of the sea. This plateau is not too deep 

 for the Avire 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 it is once lodged. 



452. As Professor Bailey remarks, the animalculse, whose re- 

 mains Brooke's lead has brought up from the bottom of the deep 

 sea, probably did not live or die therq.. They would have had no 

 light there, and, had they lived there, their frail little textures would 

 have been subjected in their growth to a pressure upon them of a 

 column of water twelve thousand feet high, equal to the weight of 

 four hundred atmospheres. They probably lived and sported 

 near the surface, where they could feel the genial influence of 

 both lisfht and heat, and were buried in the lichen caves below 

 after death. 



453. Brooke's lead and the microscope, therefore, it would 

 seem, are about to 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 — makes no impression — are, it w^ould now 

 seem, as obedient to the great law of change as is any department 

 whatever, either of the animal or the vegetable kingdom. It is 

 now suggested that, henceforward, we should view the surface of 

 the sea as a nursery teeming with nascent organisms, its depths as 

 the cemetery for families of living creatures that outnumber the 

 sands on the sea-shore for multitude. 



Where there is a nursery, hard by there will be found also a 

 grave-yard — such is the condition of the animal world. But it 

 never occurred to us before to consider the surface of the sea as 

 ene wide nurgery, its every ripple a cradle, and its bottom one 

 vast burial-place. 



454. On those parts of the Solid portions of the earth's crust 



