APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 127 



new views concerning the physical economy of 

 earth and ocean, as any one may at once per- 

 ceive on opening Maury's pages. We shall 

 select one lesson thus taught as to the nature 

 of the great ocean-bed, and the beneficent and 

 wise ends thereby accomplished by Him, who, 

 in the beginning, gathered together the waters 

 into one place. Not only in the Atlantic, but 

 from the Pacific and Coral Seas, have speci- 

 mens been now brought up, and, on examina- 

 tion, they all tell the same story, namely, that 

 the bed of the ocean is a vast cemetery. " The 

 ocean's bed, wherever Brooke's sounding-rod has 

 touched, is found to be soft, consisting almost 

 entirely of the remains of infusoria. . . . Some of 

 the specimens are as pure and free from the sand 

 of the sea as the snow-flake that falls, when it 

 is calm upon the lea, is from the dust of the 

 earth. Indeed they suggest the idea that the 

 sea, like the snow-cloud, with its flakes, in a 

 calm, is always letting fall upon its bed showers 

 of these microscopic shells ; and we may readily 

 imagine that the ' sunless wrecks/ which, strew 

 its bottom, are, in the process of ages, hid under 

 this fleecy covering, presenting the rounded ap- 



