2 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. [CHAP. i. 



culties in the way of any attempt at investigation. 

 Even men of science seemed to share this idea, for 

 they gave little heed to the apparently well-authenti- 

 cated instances of animals, comparatively high in the 

 scale of life, having been brought up on sounding 

 lines from great depths, and welcomed any suggestion 

 of the animals having got entangled when swimming 

 on the surface, or of carelessness on the part of the 

 observers. And this was strange, for every other 

 question in Physical Geography had been investi- 

 gated by scientific men with consummate patience 

 and energy. Every gap in the noble little army of 

 martyrs striving to extend the boundaries of know- 

 ledge in the wilds of Australia, on the Zambesi, 

 or towards the North or South Pole, was struggled 

 for by earnest volunteers, and still the great ocean 

 slumbering beneath the moon covered a region 

 apparently as inaccessible to man as the ' mare 

 serenitatis.' 



A few years ago the bottom of the sea was required 

 for the purpose of telegraphic communication, and 

 practical men mapped out the bed of the North 

 Atlantic, and devised ingenious methods of ascertain- 

 ing the nature of the material covering the bottom. 

 They laid a telegraphic cable across it, and the cable 

 got broken and they went back to the spot and fished 

 up the end of it easily, from a depth of nearly two 

 miles. 



It had long been a question with naturalists whether 

 it might not be possible to dredge the bottom of the 

 sea in the ordinary way, and to send down water- 

 bottles and registering instruments to settle finally 

 the question of a ' zero of animal life/ and to deter- 



