THE ATLANTIC TELEGKAPH. 333 



every wliere, whencesoever specimens of bottom liave been ob- 

 tained by the deep-sea plummet, they have been found to consist 

 of the nntriturated remains of the microscopic organisms of the 

 sea. Some of these have the flesh of the httle creature still in 

 them. Now these feculences of the sea, as the remains of its mi- 

 croscopic inhabitants may be called, are relatively as light in the 

 water as motes in the air; and, if the bottom of the sea were 

 scoured by its currents, those sea motes would be swept away into 

 drifts like snow, or into dunes like sand; they would be scratched, 

 their sharp corners and the edges would be broken off and rounded. 

 Moreover, were they drifted about, then sand and other scourings 

 of the ocean would be found mixed with them. But not so ; the 

 Epecimens brought up from the deep sea show no such mixture, 

 and the infusoria thence bear no marks of abrasion upon even 

 their most delicate parts. Indeed, some of them are so fresh, still 

 having the meat of the animal in them, that Professor Ehrenberg, 

 of Berlin, with others of the Biotic school, maintains that these- 

 shells live at the bottom of the deep sea, whence the sounding-rod 

 recovered them. The anti-Biotics^ on the contrary, maintain that 

 they live and die at or near the surface, and are buried on the 

 bottom and bed of the ocean ; that the antiseptic properties of 

 sea-water tend to prevent decay in the first instance, and as the 

 dead animalculse continue to sink, the pressure of the superincum- 

 bent water prevents chemical decomposition ; and, consequently, 

 they of this school hold, and rightly hold, I think, that, so far 

 from admitting that any of the abrading forces of water, which 

 are so familiar to us, are harbored in the depths of the ocean, or 

 that they can find room for play there, the hand of decay itself 

 becomes, when stretched forth in the chambers of the deep, so 

 palsied as scarcely to be able to make itself felt, even upon the 

 most perishable things, when once lodged on the bottom of the 

 deep sea. 



The pressure on the telegraphic plateau varies from 200 to 800 

 atmospheres ; that is, from 430,000 to 650,000 lbs. the square foot. 

 Chemical forces may be measured, and consequently overcome by 

 pressure, for the gases generated by chemical decomposition are 

 themselves capable, so the chemists tell us, of exerting in the proc- 

 ess of that decomposition only so much pressure; hence, if we 

 subject them to a greater pressure, they can not separate, and de- 

 composition can not take place. 



