§ 6U. THE BASIN AND BED OF THE ATLANTIC. 399 



(lied, for (§ 590) there is nothing to turn them over after death at 

 the bottom of the deep sea, consequently their skeletons would be 

 brought up in the quills of the. sounding machine flat side down, 

 convex side up. 



614. But, before there was an opportunity of trying this plan. 

 An unexpected soiu- Ehreubcrg himsclf afforded the solution in a most 

 tion afforded. unexpcctcd way ; and in soundings from a great 



depth in the Mediterranean, among them he found many fresh- 

 water shells with their fleshy parts still in them, though the spec- 

 imens were taken from the middle of the Mediterranean. That 

 savant, with his practiced eye, detected among them Swiss forms, 

 which must have come down the Danube, and so out into the 

 Mediterranean hundreds of miles, and on journeys which would 

 require months, if not years, for these slowly-drifting creatures to 

 accomplish. And so the anti-biotics maintain that their doctrine 

 is established.* 



* In a paper upon the organic life-forms from unexpected great depths of the 

 Mediterranean, obtained by Captain Spratt from deep-sea soundings between Malta 

 and Crete, in 1857, and read before the Berlin Academy, November 27, 1857, Eh- 

 renberg said, "Especially striking among all the forms of the deep are the Phytoli- 

 tharia, of which fifty-two in number are found. It w^ould not be strange if these 

 fifty-two forms were spongoliths, since we expect to find sponge in the sea. But a 

 large number, not less than twenty kinds of Phytolitharia, are fresh-water and land 

 foi-ms. Hence the question arises. How came these forms into those depths in the 

 middle of the sea ? 



"Naturally one looks at first to the Nile and the coasts ; but the sea current carries 

 the turbid Nile water eastward ; for the current, according to Captain Smyth, especial- 

 ly in the middle of the sea, not only in the Levant, but also in the southern edge, is 

 clearly a constant eastwardly one. Besides, there are among the forms some north- 

 ern ones — e. g., Eunotia triodon, C amp ylo discus cit/peus, and many gallionella. This 

 peculiarity may, perhaps, indicate a lower return current, hitherto observed only at 

 Gibraltar, which probably brings into this basin the forms from the northern Euro- 

 pean rocks. Thus, for instance, the Danube may bring the Swiss forms in that cir- 

 culation. But, on the other hand, a highly striking agreement with the forms of the 

 ' trade-wind dust' is not to be overlooked. 



"In reference to the question of permanent life in these most recent deep-sea ma- 

 terials, it may be observed, that the forms which we find arc astonishingly well pie- 

 served, and in very large proportion, sometimes forming the principal mass of the 

 earthy bottom. 



"The striking fact, moreover, that every one who has the opportunity to compare 

 accurately the microscopic forms of the whole land and sea under ^reat variety of 

 circumstance does, out of even the smallest specimens of the bottom, deduce so 

 much that is new and peculiar to him, is no light testimony to show that the depth 

 is not merely a collection of rubbish of the dead surface-life, however much there 



