6 Inaugural Lecture 1889 



of vital importance ; and the work of sounding for that purpose 

 was taken up with activity, and continues to be prosecuted 

 with diligence, revealing much which could neither have 

 been suspected nor looked for, but for the necessity on com- 

 mercial grounds of having as complete a survey as possible 

 of the bed on which a cable is to lie before placing it there. 

 Continued improvements in the appliances and instruments 

 have made the results of sounding more precise than was 

 possible in earlier times, and as the data accumulate the 

 bathymetric charts of oceans are becoming more accurate. 

 Submarine eminences are discovered by the act of measuring 

 their height; terrestrial eminences are discovered first and 

 their height measured afterwards: hence it will be a long 

 time before we can map the bottom of the ocean in the same 

 detail as we can the surface of the land. 



The civil war in America was doubly disadvantageous to 

 the cause of deep sea investigation. It of course prevented 

 their ships being employed in this service; and, as Maury 

 took the side of the South, he was never employed again 

 and died in retirement in the year 1873. This was one of the 

 many deplorable but unavoidable accidents of the war; but 

 even if it had been otherwise, the exhaustion following on 

 the long war would have allowed little scope for the active 

 prosecution of such investigations. He died, however, with 

 the satisfaction of having established the meteorology of the 

 ocean at its surface on a solid basis and of having given the 

 starting impetus to deep sea investigation, the far-reaching 

 results of which were already becoming every day more clear. 



Submarine research labours under a certain disadvantage 

 as compared with subterranean research. In the latter 

 wherever the exploring instrument penetrates there the explorer 

 himself can accompany it. This is not the case in submarine 

 exploration. The utmost depth at which a man has been 

 able to work is 25 fathoms and was accomplished a few years 

 ago by a diver employed to recover specie from a steamer 

 wrecked on the steep volcanic coast of the Grand Canary. 

 The pure blue ocean water which washes the shores of the 

 island possesses great transparency, so that there was no 



