304 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA, AND ITS METEOROLOGY. 



question, " What ls the use of a new-born babe ?" Every physical 

 fact, every expression of nature, every feature of the earth, the 

 work of any and all of those agents which make the face of the 

 world what it is, and as we see it, is interesting and instructive. 

 Until we get hold of a group of physical facts, we do not know 

 what practical bearings they may have, though right-minded men 

 know that they contain many precious jewels, which the experts of 

 philosophy will not fail to bring out, polished and bright, and 

 beautifully adapted, sooner or later, to man's purposes. Already 

 we are obtaining practical answers to this question as to the use of 

 deep-sea soundings ; for, as soon as they were announced to the 

 public, they forthv^ith assumed a practical bearing in the minds of 

 men with regard to the question of a submarine telegraph across 

 the Atlantic. 



585. There is, at the bottom of this sea, between Cape Kace, in 

 Til? tpicgraphic Newfoundland, and Cape Clear, in Ireland, a re- 

 piateau. markablo steppe, wliich is already known as the tele- 

 grapliic plateau, and has already been made famous by the attempts 

 to rim a telegraphic cable across the ocean upon it. In August, 

 1858, a cable was laid upon it from Valencia in Ireland to Trinity 

 Bay in Newfoundland, and but a few messages were passed tln*ough 

 it, when it ceased to work. Whether messages can ever be suc- 

 cessfulhj sent, in a commercial sense, through such a length of con- 

 tinuous submarine wire, is by no means certain ; but that the 

 wires of 1858 so soon ceased to pass any current at all was no 

 doubt ovvdng to the fact that the cable was constructed upon erro- 

 neous principles. Its projectors, in planning its construction, did 

 not, unfortunately, avail themselves of the hght which om- deep-sea 

 soimdings had cast upon the bed of the ocean. 



586. It was upon this plateau that Brooke's sounding apparatus 

 The first specimens brouglit up its first tropMes fi'om the bottom of the 

 ings!^^'^^^ ^'"^°'^' sea. These specimens the ojfficers of the Dolphin 

 judged to be clay ; but they took the precaution to label them, 

 carefully to preserve them, and, on their return to the United 

 States, to send them to the proper bureau. They were divided ; 

 a part was sent for examination to Professor Ehrenberg, of Berlin, 

 and a part to the late Professor Bailey, of West Point — eminent 

 microscopists both. The latter thus responded : — 



587. "I am greatly obhged to you for the deep soundings you 

 Bailey's letter, scut mc last wcck, and I havc looked at them with 



great interest. They are exactly what I have wanted to get hold 



