8o SEA AND LAND 



on whicli to construct a picture of the hidden realm. So, too, 

 the thermometers which give us the ranges of temperature in 

 the depths, and the instruments which collect water from the 

 various levels of the sea, in order tliat it may be subjected to 

 chemical analysis, though they provide us with valuable infor- 

 mation, do not give us anything like the accurate data for 

 determining the climatology of the ocean-Hoors that we have 

 secured from the land. Similar observations on the land made 

 by beings in the upper air, even if they were applied only to 

 the natural wildernesses of the earth, would afford only details 

 which would require exceeding skill to frame into important 

 and trustworthy general views. This skill has fortunately 

 been commanded by the naturalists who have prosecuted the 

 modern studies concerning the oceans : no department of 

 modern science has so well united the daring of the man of 

 action with the i)atient labor of the closet student ; hardly any 

 other has so profited by the advance in the mechanic arts. 

 The methods of the students of the deep sea may indeed serve 

 as a model of the scientihc research which is so characteristic 

 of our century, for they coml^ine in an admirable way patience 

 in difficult inquiry with skill in interpretation. The affirmed 

 results, at least those which are likely to prove interesting to 

 the general student, are among the most fascinating chapters 

 in th(' liistory of the earth. 



The student who from the familiar studies of the land 

 surface — studies whicli we are all insensibly making in the 

 daily experiences of our ordinary lives — comes to the margin 

 of the sea, is naturally led to the opinion that the ocean-floors 

 have a form essentially like that of the continental fields. 

 At the shore he finds the mountains and plains of the land 

 passing by a gradual decline of the surface below the level of 



