NARRATIVE OP THE OBUISE. xxxvii 



be separated from the water, and thus these analyses gave long and very conflicting lists, 

 all claiming to present the precise quantity of sulphate and muriate of soda, of sulphate 

 and muriate, of magnesia, and of sulphate and muriate of lime, in the water. It was not 

 until 1818 that the different proportions in which these salts were procured were 

 conclusively shown to be due. not, necessarily, to any difference in the sea water, but to 

 differences in the methods of analysing it. In that year Dr. John Murray of Edinburgh 

 published an extremely valuable research oil the water of the Firth of Forth; 1 he showed 

 that by treating portions of the same sample of water in different ways, widely 

 different quantities of the various salts might be obtained, and that the only satisfactory 

 method of proceeding was to determine each base and each acid separately. The attempt 

 to discover whether the composition of sea water differed at different places was 

 frequently made, but the conditions of observation were unsatisfactory. The samples 

 could not be relied upon as properly collected or preserved, and much uncertainty 

 remained on the subject. 



I'eron, a French naturalist who went round the world in the year XII. of the 

 Republic (1805), made a number of observations on the temperature of the ocean at 

 different depths. He was strongly impressed by the importance of oceanic research, and 

 wrote :— " Of all the experiments in Natural Philosophy there are few the results of which 

 are more interesting or more curious than those which form the subject of this memoir. 

 The meteorologist must derive from them valuable data in regard to atmospheric 

 observations in the middle of the ocean ; they may furnish to the naturalist knowledge 

 indispensably necessary in regard to the habitation of the different tribes of marine 

 animals ; and the geologuc and philosopher will find in them the most certain facts in 

 regard to the propagation of heat in the middle of the seas, and of the physical state of 

 the interior parts of the globe, the deepest excavations of which can scarcely go beyond 

 the surface. In a word, there is no science which may not derive benefit from the 

 results of experiments of this kind. How much then ought we to be surprised that 

 they have hitherto excited so little attention ! " ' 



Pe ron's results were very erroneous ; he imagined that the bed of the ocean was 

 covered with eternal ice, and that, as a consequence, life was impossible there. From 

 l he state of deep-sea research at the time this theory was quite plausible and 

 required to be refuted before it was rejected. Sir John Ross's great Arctic voyage 

 in 1818 furnished complete and most satisfactory evidence that Peron's deductions were 

 wrong. Apart from the exploring work and the very valuable magnetic observations 

 of Ross's expedition, it stands out in history as the first in which satisfactory soundings 

 were made and samples of the bottom obtained. Ross had invented an arrange- 

 ment, which he called the " Deep-sea Clamm," for gripping a portion of the bottom and 



1 Tram. Roy. 8oc. Kih'u., vol. xiii. [>. 205, 1818. 



2 Journal de Physique, t. lix. p. 361, an. xiii. ; Phil Mag., vet. I, vol. \\\. ]>. 12!), 1805. 



