HOW THE SEA IS SOUNDED. 341 



In an hour this messenger of man's ingenuity makes its excur- 

 sion through five miles of watery waste to the abysmal regions of 

 perfect repose and brings to the light of day the soil with which 

 the rain of shells of minute infusorial organisms from the upper 



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FIG. 7. DREDGING. 



waters has been for ages mantling the ocean's floor. Here and 

 there a giant peak rising from these sunless depths lifts his head 

 to see the sky, and the dredge and trawl tell us that all along his 

 rugged sides, and on the hills and plains below, and even in the 

 inky blackness and the freezing cold of the deepest valleys, there 

 is life. 



THE origin of life, said Dr. J. S. Burdon-Sanderson in his presidential address 

 before the British Association, " the first transition from non-living to living, is a 

 riddle which lies outside of our scope. No seriously minded person, however, 

 doubts that organized Nature, as it now presents itself to us, has become what it is 

 by a process of gradual perfecting or advancement, brought about by the elimina- 

 tion of those organisms which failed to obey the fundamental principle of adapta- 

 tion. . . . Each step, therefore, in this evolution is a reaction to external influ- 

 ences, the motive of which is essentially the same as that by which from moment 

 to moment tbe organism governs itself. And the whole process is a necessary 

 outcome of the fact that those organisms are most prosperous which look best 

 after their own welfare." 



