DEEP-SEA DREDG1NGS. 147 



which they have been obtained. Sir Charles Lyell has 

 fairly spoken of them as so astonishing ' that they have 

 to the geologist almost a revolutionary character.' 

 Let us consider a few of them. 



No light can be supposed to penetrate to the enor- 

 mous depths just spoken of. Therefore, how certainly 

 we might conclude that there can be no life there. If, 

 instead of dealing with the habitability of planets, 

 Whewell, in his e Plurality of Worlds,' had been con- 

 sidering the question whether at depths of two or three 

 miles living creatures could subsist, how convincingly 

 would he have proved the absurdity of such a suppo- 

 sition. Intense cold, perfect darkness, and a persistent 

 pressure of two or three tons to the square inch, 

 such, he might have argued, are the conditions under 

 which life exists, if at all, in those dismal depths. 

 And even if he had been disposed to concede the bare 

 possibility that life of some sort may be found there, 

 then certainly, he would have urged, some new sense 

 must replace sight the creatures in these depths can 

 assuredly have no eyes, or only rudimentary ones. 



But the recent deep-sea dredgings have proved that 

 not only does life exist in the very deepest parts of 

 the Atlantic, but that the beings which live and move 

 and have their being beneath the three-mile mountain 

 of water have eyes which the ablest naturalists pro- 

 nounce to be perfectly developed. Light, then, of 

 some sort must exist in those abysms, though whether 

 the home of the deep-sea animals be phosphorescent, 

 as Sir Charles Lyell suggests, or how light may 



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