222 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



bay or bight, into which the sea exuviae, consisting of animal 

 matter, the remnants of sea animals and floating and shell fish 

 deposites itself and forms a vast bed of 5ea mud or guano, of a 

 chalky substance containing ammonia^ nitrogen and posphate of 

 lime and soda. This mud is of a white green color; when the 

 anchors of the ships are raised at the Islands they bring up large 

 quantities of this guano mud^ which when dried form a substance 

 liliethe guano on the Islands, and when mixed with the guano 

 cannot be distinguished from it. 



It will be asked from whence has come this great deposit of 

 guano 1 We answer, from the animal and vegetable matter of 

 the sea. A writer in one of the late English reviews, says : 



" That sea- weed grows from the bottom of the ocean to the sur- 

 face in stalks 1000 to 1500 feet high, having stems scarce as big 

 as a man's finger. A surface fifteen times greater than that of 

 Great Britain covers the ocean with sea-weed, stretching west 

 from the Canaries and Cape Verd Islands, and east of the gulf 

 stream. This vast dominion is not only filled with vegetable but 

 also with animal life. All over the ocean, in every clime and 

 latitude, the water is filled with animal life until every wave is 

 converted into' a crest of light by animals of the minutest form 

 up to sea monsters, which derive nutriment from the waters im- 

 pregnated with animal matter. Reason and imagination are 

 equally confounded by the effort to conceive those hosts of indi- 

 vidual existence generated or annihilated at a passing instant of 

 time. No scheme of numbers can reach them even by approxi- 

 mation. All the materials of organic life are in a state of 

 unceasing change from the minutest aniraalculse of the ocean to 

 the Leviathan of the great deep." 



The laws of life and death in the ocean are the same as on land 

 as we have above hinted. The transformations are governed by 

 the same divine economy. The bones left on the field of Water- 

 loo were gathered up to be put on the corn and grass fields of 

 England to make other bones for the fields of Sebastopol and Bala- 

 klava. Maa in his natural state was the last and most finished 

 work of creation; he is naturally the longest lived of the whole 

 aniii:al kingdom. We are told by the philosophers, that since the 

 creation the remains of the human family alone would cover the 

 land on the globe more than a foot deep of soil. What shall we 

 say, then, of all the other animal ani vegetable productions? 

 Wlion d"ath takes place a large portion of all the animal and 

 vegetable productions are carried by the streams and rivers into 

 the ocean, ami there deposited. The purest water from our 



