128 THE MICROSCOPE. 



pearance which is seen over the body of the 

 traveller who has perished in the snow-storm. 

 The ocean, especially within and near the 

 tropics, swarms with life. The remains of its 

 myriads of moving things are conveyed by cur- 

 rents, and scattered and lodged in course of 

 time all over its bottom. This process, con- 

 tinued for ages, has covered the depths of the 

 ocean as with a mantle, consisting of organisms 

 as delicate as the macled frost, and as light as 

 the undrifted snow-flake on the mountain." 

 What a marvellously wondrous result is effected 

 by the entombment there of these unnumbered 

 myriads of once living things, and by the deep 

 unbroken silence of this universal ocean church- 

 yard ! For let us again quote Maury's words, as 

 he is about to close his volume : a Brooke's 

 sounding-rod has brought up from the depth of 

 more than 2000 fathoms, under the Gulf Stream, 

 the remains of organisms so delicate, yet so 

 perfect, that evidently they had never been 

 rolled along the bottom of the sea by any cur- 

 rent. At the depth of 2000 fathoms in the sea, 

 the pressure is 6000 pounds upon a square inch. 

 Suppose we imagine the currents of the Gulf 



