39 



Again. The coral fisheries give us occasion to ob- 

 serve, that there are many large caverns in the bottom 

 of the sea, especially where k is rocky, as also in the sides 

 of perpendicular rocks. These are often of great depth 

 as well as extent, some with wide, others with narrow en- 

 trances. Nor is it any wonder, that as we daily find 

 vast caverns on the land in rocky mountains, so we 

 should find them in rocks under the sea. Nay, we may 

 expect them in'these the rather, as the rocks at land arc in 

 a state of rest, while those at sea are continually washed 

 by the water, which insinuates every where, and by 

 its continual agitation, enlarges every cavity it finds. 



Upon the whole it seems plain, that the bason of the 

 sea was after the flood composed of the same substances 

 as the surface of the rest of the earth, namely, stone, 

 clay, sand, and the like. It is true, the plummet in 

 .sounding usually brings up a matter composed of mud, 

 dead weeds, broken shells, and various bodies cemented 

 together, by a sparry or tartareous substance. But these 

 are only an artificial bottom, covering the natural one, 

 silch indeed as one might expect where numerous ani- 

 mals and vegetables are produced and decay, and where 

 Hie quiet waters have time to deposit their stony matter, 

 as our petrifying springs do. 



There are places however where this adventitious crust 

 ,\.s not found, but the natural bottom appears of the 

 same nature with the strata in the body of the earth. 

 But the fine and pure sand we sometimes find, seems not 

 to be the original bottom," but to have been rather 

 brought into the sea by the course of some subterrane- 

 ous river, and to be lodged in one of those particular 

 basons, which these rivers form to themselves, 



In deep water, where the surface only is disturbed by 

 storms, and the lower part remains more quiet for ages, 

 the bottom is covered with a great variety of things : 

 sometimes with pure sand, sometimes a sort of sand, 

 made of shells beat to power, sometimes with powdered 

 corals, sometimes fragments of rocks. But besides these, 

 *bkh might well be expected, the plummet sometimes 



