358 ADDENDA. 



pear fully to confirm all that I have previously advanced concern-^ 

 ing the bottom of the deep sea and the adaptation of this part of 

 the Atlantic for a telegraphic cable. My investigations show that 

 the bottom is so free from currents and abrading agents that a 

 rope of sand, if once laid there, would be stout enough to with- 

 stand the pulling of all the forces that are at play upon the bottom 

 of the deep sea. 



Many are the great truths of nature which, when once suggest- 

 ed, appear so obvious and simple that we wonder why reason did 

 not suggest them, or common sense point them out before. So it 

 appears with this cushio7i of still water which seems to be every 

 where interposed between the bottom of the deep sea and its cur- 

 rents. We are surprised now that it never occurred to us that it 

 must be so ; how, if it were not so, the scouring action of such cur- 

 rents upon the bed of the ocean would have worn it into deep 

 scores, furrows, and gashes, which, the deeper they grow, the faster 

 they would wear, until finally the solid crust of our planet would 

 have been worn through. Thus, while the deep places would grow 

 deeper, the shallow places would grow shallower, the proportion 

 of land and water surface would be altered, and thus that beauti- 

 ful system of terrestrial economy which regulates the amount and 

 kind of work to be performed by every one of the myriads of phys- 

 ical agencies that have been employed, under the guidance of su- 

 preme intelligence since the beginning, in bringing this world to 

 the state in which we actually find it, would have been marred 

 long ago. 



If the currents do now and then press too heavily upon this 

 fending cushion of still and heavy water, and wear holes or hol- 

 lows in it, as they probably do, it is self-adjusting, and as soon as 

 the occasion which called for this wearing passes by, the shielding 

 water below returns to its place by the force of hydrostatic pressure. 

 Brooke's sounding-rod has brought up from the depth of more 

 than 2000 fathoms under the Gulf Stream the remains of organ- 

 isms so delicate, yet so perfect, that evidently they had never been 

 rolled along the bottom of the sea by any current. At the depth 

 of 2000 fathoms in the sea the pressure is 6000 pounds upon a 

 square inch. Suppose wx imagine the currents of the Gulf Stream, 



