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 THE PAGE OF NATURE. 173 



than plummet ever sounded. They form an enormous 

 bank, flanking at an average depth of 1800 feet the 

 whole length of Victoria Barrier a glacier of ice some 

 400 miles long and 120 broad. And it is extremely 

 probable that they are uniformly dispersed over the whole 

 surface of the ocean ; for, owing to their extreme minute- 

 ness in their individual state, and the transparency of 

 their tissues, they cannot be perceived by the naked eye 

 unless when accumulated into immense masses and con- 

 trasted with opaque substances. The surface of the sea, 

 it has been said, is one wide nursery, its every ripple a 

 cradle, and its bottom one vast cemetery. The floor of 

 the ocean is paved with these organisms ; those mysteri- 

 ous submarine plains, where the seer's vision of the " sea 

 of glass " seems realized, where no wind blows, and no 

 storm rages, and no current frets, are covered with their 

 remains, unmixed even with a single particle of sand. 

 The soundings obtained from these silent motionless 

 depths, are as pure and free from the slightest intermix- 

 ture of other matter, as the new-fallen snow-flake is from 

 the dust of the earth. And as a snow-cloud in a still 

 January evening discharges its wavering flakes upon the 

 earth, so are the waves continually letting fall upon their 

 bed showers of minute diatoms whose term of life had 

 expired, kindly strewing the melancholy wrecks of ships 

 with their fleecy coverings, and protecting by their soft 

 cushions the floor of the deep from the abrasion of the 

 waters. 



Humble and minute although these diatoms may be, 

 they are among the oldest of the living inhabitants of 

 the globe, having performed their part in creation long 



