A WALK UNDER THE SEA. 59 



roar of tempests can be heard. The huge wave, crested with 

 elemental fury, rolls on, but makes no stir in the stillness and 

 stagnation of the abysmal realm. 



When we crossed the borders of this dark and silent abyss, 

 our feet sank in a white pasty slime which has been desig- 

 nated " Globigerina ooze." The dredges of the CJiallenger 

 and the Albatross have been down here, hung by a piano 

 wire over the stern of the vessel, and samples of this ooze 

 have been studied. We find it composed chiefly of micro- 

 scopic dead shells called Fo-ram-i-nif'-e-ra, together with others 

 called Pter'-o-pods. The little creatures which formed the 

 shells do not live here ; they dwell in calm zones of water far 

 above. When the conscious animal ceases to live, its tiny 

 house sinks down into this dark world. And thus, as the 

 ages roll by, the fine chalky rain slowly accumulates upon the 

 bottom. When this ooze is dried and hardened, it resembles 

 the chalk of Europe ; and when that is microscopically ex- 

 amined, we find in it the same little Foraminifera. These are 

 important geological facts, which, though they come out of 

 an abyss of darkness, throw a vivid light on equally dark 

 chapters of the world's long-past history. 



We have groped our way down three and four miles be- 

 neath daylight. A sort of ooze still overspreads the bottom ; 

 but it is not the Globigerina and Pteropod ooze. It is a fine 

 rusty clay. But the white shells are not wanting because the 

 tiny creatures which secrete them are not overhead. They 

 swarm there as elsewhere, far from land with other pelagw 

 forms. But the fragile matter of the shell is dissolved before 

 it reaches this great depth. Only the aluminous and insolu- 

 ble constituent reaches the bottom. This clay ooze possesses 

 other interest. Disseminated through it are minute crystals 

 of such minerals as escape through the throats of volcanoes 

 into the upper air. Here are the dust particles which have im- 

 parted a ruddy glow to many a past sunset. Once the source 

 of the roseate glory of the twilight hour, they lie now, in im- 

 penetrable darkness and the repose of death. How changed 

 the fortune of the little particle. It floated for months in the 



