THE BASIN AND BED OF THE ATLANTIC. 319 



with tliem 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 

 wire to sink down and rest upon, yet it is not so shallow that 

 currents, or icebergs, or anj abrading force can derange the wire 

 after it is once lodged there. 



591. Is there life in them ? — As Professor Bailey remarks (§ 587), 

 the animalcula3, whose remains Brooke's lead has brought up 

 from the bottom of the deep sea, probably did not live or die 

 there. They would have had no light there, and, had they lived 

 there, their frail little texture would have been subjected, in its 

 growth, to the pressure of a column of water twelve thousand feet 

 high, equal to the weight of four hundred atmospheres. They 

 probably lived and died near the surface, where they could feel 

 the genial influence of both light and heat, and were buried in the 

 lichen caves below after death. 



592. TJie ocean in a new light. — Brooke's lead and the micro- 

 scope, therefore, it would seem, are about to teach us to regard 

 the ocean in a new light. Its bosom, which so teems with ani- 

 mal life — its face, upon which time writes no wrinkles, makes no 

 impression, are, it would 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 out-number the sands on the sea shore for 

 multitude. Where there is a nursery, hard by there will be found 

 also a graveyard ; such is the condition of the animal world. 

 ButJ it never occurred to us before to consider the surface of the 

 sea as one wide niu'sery, its every ripple a cradle, and its bottom 

 one vast burial-place. 



593. Levelling agencies. — On those parts of the solid portions of 

 the earth's crust which are at the bottom of the atmosphere, 

 various agents are at work, levelling both upwards and down- 

 wards. Heat and cold, rain and sunshine, the winds and the 

 streams, all, assisted by the forces of gravitation, are unceasingl}^ 

 wasting away the high places on the land, and as perpetually 

 filling up the low. But in contemplating the levelling agencies 

 that are at work upon the solid portions of the crust of our j^lanet 

 which are at the bottom of the sea, one is led, at first thought, 

 almost to the conclusion that these levelling agents are powerless 



