RECORDS LEFT BY THE SEA 



bones of whales have been dredged up from it. Some of 

 these relics are quite fresh ; others are coated with a crust 

 of brown peroxide of manganese. Some are covered with 

 this material and hidden in it. One haul of an ocean 

 dredge will bring up the bones in all these states, so that 

 they must be lying side by side. The bones are probably 

 those of many generations of animals, and it must take a 

 long time to cover them with the manganese deposit. 

 But the clay is deposited even more slowly than the man- 

 ganese, so that it must fall very slowly indeed. 



But besides these things the bottom of the sea receives 

 deposits of the remains of all kinds of shells, corals, and 

 all sorts of marine creatures, great and small. As the 

 countless myriads of the animals of the sea die, the shells 

 with which they are covered, or the bones which form 

 their framework, fall continually to the bottom of the 

 oceanic gulfs in which they dwell. Then the ocean floor 

 is covered with the remains of tiny animals incomparably 

 more numerous than the stars of the sky ; and this grey 

 slimy ooze of organic matter hardens by pressure into 

 sedimentary rock. In the course of ages, when the slow 

 decline of the water lays it bare, it may become part of 

 the land on which men dwell. But it is always forming, 

 has always been forming, since life first appeared on the 

 earth. It is on this ocean floor that man to-day lays his 

 telegraph cables. Mr. Rudyard Kipling, in his verses 

 "The Deep Sea Cables,' 1 has drawn a vivid picture of 

 the bed of the deep ocean : 



The wrecks dissolve above us : their dust drops down from afar 

 Down to the dark, to the utter dark where the blind white sea- 

 snakes are. 



62 



