202 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



fore, we admit the Darwin theory, we must also admit that there 

 was a period when the sea was without salt, and consequently 

 without shells or animals either of the silicious or calcareous kind. 

 If ever there were such a time, it must have been when the rivers 

 were collecting and pouring in the salts which now make the brine 

 of the ocean. But while the palaiontological records of the earth, 

 on one hand, afford no evidence of any such fresh-water period, 

 the Mosaic account is far from being negative with its testimony 

 on the other. According to it, we infer that the sea was salt as 

 early, at least, as the fifth day, for it was on that day of creation 

 that the waters were commanded to "bring forth abundantly the 

 moving creature that hath life." It is in obedience to that com- 

 mand that the sea now teems with organisms ; and it is marvel- 

 ous how abundantly the obedient waters do bring forth, and how 

 wonderful for variety as well as multitude their progeny is. All 

 who pause to look are astonished to see how the prolific ocean 

 teems and swarms with life. The moving creatures in the sea 

 constitute in their myriads of multitudes one of the " wonders of 

 the deep." 



569. It is the custom of Captain Foster, of the American ship 

 " Garrick," who is one of my most patient of observers, to amuse 

 himself by making drawings in his abstract log of the curious ani- 

 malculte which, with the microscope, he finds in the surface water 

 alongside ; and though he has been following the sea for many 

 years, he never fails to express his wonder and amazement at the 

 immense numbers of living creatures that the microscope reveals 

 to him in sea water. Hitherto his examinations related only to 

 the surface waters, but in the log now before me he went into the 

 depths, and he was more amazed than ever to see how abundantly 

 the waters even there bring forth. 



'-'- January '2'^th, 1855. In examining animalculse in sea water, 

 I have," says he, "heretofore used surface water. This after- 

 noon, after pumping for some time from the stern pump seven feet 

 below the surface, I examined the water, and was surprised to 

 find that the fluid was literally alive with animated matter, em- 

 bracing beautiful varieties. " Of some he says, ' ' Numerous heads, 

 purple, red, and variegated." 



