3M PHYSICAL GEOGEAPHY OF THE SEA, AND ITS METEOROLOGY. 



tween Europe and America, to " corn " fresh meat by sinking it to 

 great depths overboard. If they sink it too deep, or let it stay dovm 

 too long it becomes too salt. According to them, this process is so 

 quick and thorough, because of the pressure and the affinity wliich 

 not only forces the water among the fibres of the meat, but which 

 also induces the salt to leaye the water and strike into the meat ; 

 and that the fleshy part of these microscopic organisms have been 

 exposed to powerful antiseptic agents is proved by the fact that they 

 are brought up in the middle of the ocean, and remain on board the 

 vessel exposed to the air for months before they reach the hands of 

 the microscopist ; some of them have remained so exposed for more 

 than a year, and then been found full of fleshy matter : a sure 

 proof that it had been preserved from putrefaction and decay by 

 processes which it had undergone in the sea, and before it was 

 brought up mto the ah. 



611. Thus the anti-biotics held that these httle creatures were 

 On pressure. preserved for a wliile after death, and until they 

 reached a certain depth, by salt, and afterwards by pressure. They 

 held that certain conditions are requisite in order that the decay of 

 organic matter may take place ; that the animal tissues of these 

 shells during the process of decay are for the most part converted 

 into gases ; that these gases, in separating from the animal com- 

 pound, are capable of exerting only a certain mechanical force, 

 and no more ; that this force is not very great ; and, unless it were 

 sufficient to overcome the pressure of deep-sea water, their separation 

 could not go on, and that, consequently, there is a certain depth in 

 the sea beyond which animal decomposition or vegetable decay can- 

 not take place. In support of this \dew, they referred to the well- 

 known eftects of pressure in arresting or modifying the energies 

 displayed by certain chemical affinities ; and in proof of the posi- 

 tion that great compression in the sea prevents putrefaction, they 

 referred to the fact weU kno^Ti to the fishermen of Nantucket and 

 New Bradford, viz., that when a whale that they have killed sinks 

 in shallovv' water, he, as the process of decay commences, is seen to 

 swell and rise ; but when he sinks in deep water, the pressure is 

 such as to prevent the formation of the distending gases, and he 

 never does rise. Some of these specimens have come from depths 

 where the pressure is equal to that of 400 or 500 atmospheres. 

 Specimens have been obtained by Lieutenant Brooke, hi the Pacific 

 with " fleshy parts " among them, at the depth of 3300 fathoms, 

 and where the pressure is nearly 700 atmospheres. We have 



