328 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA, AND ITS METEOROLOGY. 



but when placed dead in the water and allowed freely to sinTr, 

 the force of gravity always, and for obvious reasons, causes all 

 such forms to sink with the convex side down. Brooke's lead 

 will bring up these shells exactly as they lie on the bottom, and 

 so he proposed to observe with regard to their manner of lying. 

 Of course, if they lived at the bottom, they would die as they 

 lived, and lie as they died, for (§ 590) there is nothing to tuni 

 them over after death at the bottom of the deep sea, conse- 

 quently their skeletons would be brought' up in the quills of the^ 

 sounding machine flat side down, convex side up ; but if Ihey 

 lived near the surface, and reached the bottom after death, they 

 would be found flat side up. 



614. An unexpected solution afforded. — But, before there was 

 an opportunity of trying this plan, Ehrenberg himself aiforded 

 the solution in a most unexpected way : — in examining sound- 

 ings from a great depth in the Mediterranean, he found many 

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

 the specimens were taken from the middle of that sea. That 

 savant, with his practised 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 whicli 

 would require months, if not years, for these slowly-drifting 

 creatures to accomplish. And so the anti-biotics maintain 

 (§ 603) that their doctrine is established.* 



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

 ]\Iediterranean, obtamed by Captain Spratt from deep-sea soundings between 

 Malta and Crete, in 1857, and read before the Berlin Academy, November 27,. 

 1857, Ehrenberg said, " Especially striking among all the forms of the deep are 

 the Phytolitharia, of which fifty-two in number are found. It would not be 

 strange if these fifty-two forms were spongohths, since we expect to find sponge 

 in the sea. But a large number, not less than twenty kinds of Pliytolitharia, 

 are fresh-water and land forms. Hence the question arises, How came these 

 forms into those deptlis 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, especially in the middle of the sea, not only in the Levant, but also in 

 the southern edge, is clearly a constant castwardly one. Besides, there are 

 among the forms some northern ones— e. g., Funotia triodon, Campylodiscus 

 clypeics, and many gallionella. This peculiarity may, perhaps, indicate a lower 

 return current, hitlicrto observed only at Gibraltar, which probably brings into> 

 this basin the forms from the Northern European rocks. Thus, for instance, 

 the Danube may bring the Swiss forms in that circulation. But, on the other 

 hand, a highly striking agreement with the forms of the ' trade-wind dust ' is. 

 not to be overlooked. 



