12 TOILERS IN THE SEA. 



first, as to pressure. "There was," he says, "a 

 curious popular notion, in which I well remember 

 sharing when a boy, that, in going down, the sea- 

 water became gradually, under the pressure, heavier 

 and heavier, and that all the loose things in the sea 

 floated at different levels, according to their specific 

 weight, forming a kind of false bottom to the ocean, 

 beneath which there lay all the depth of clear, 

 still water, which was heavier than molten gold." 



"The conditions of pressure are certainly very 

 extraordinary. At 2,000 fathoms, a man would bear 

 upon his body a weight equal to twenty locomotive 

 engines, each with a long goods train loaded with 

 pig-iron. We are apt to forget, however, that water 

 is almost incompressible, and that, therefore, the 

 density of sea-water at a depth of 2,000 fathoms is 

 scarcely appreciably increased. But an organism 

 supported through all its tissues on all sides, within 

 and without, by incompressible fluids at the same 

 pressure, would not necessarily be incommoded by 

 it. We sometimes find when we get up in the morn- 

 ing, by a rise of an inch in the barometer, that nearly 

 half a ton has been quietly placed upon us during 

 the night, but we experience no inconvenience, 

 rather a feeling of exhilaration and buoyancy, since 

 it requires a little less exertion to move our bodies 

 in the denser medium. At all events, it is a fact that 

 the animals of all the invertebrate classes, which 



