The Mighty Deep 



net fine cloth is frequently sewn, so that mud 

 and small animals may not slip through and 

 be lost. 



Immense supplies have been thus dredged and 

 hauled up from the bottom of the sea. Muds 

 and oozes, sands and pebbles, stones and rocks, 

 shelly deposits, volcanic deposits, remains in- 

 numerable of dead plants, remains still more 

 abundant of animals, including earbones of 

 whales and teeth of sharks, and more rarely 

 other parts of animal-skeletons — large, small, 

 microscopic, these all have been, with infinite 

 care, with infinite patience, sorted and examined 

 and classified. 



Teeth and earbones ! But where are the great 

 shark-skeletons ? Where are the mighty bone 

 frameworks of whales ? 



If a whale's earbones lie here, surely here also 

 must have sunk the enormous carcase. Yet all 

 the rest has vanished. All has been dissolved 

 — disintegrated — eaten up, as it were, by the 

 black and silent waste of water. Sea-water has 

 an extraordinary dissolving power, much inten- 

 sified by added pressure at great depths, and 

 few substances can long withstand that power. 

 Not even the massive skeletons of sharks and 

 whales, with the exception of the teeth and 



i88 



