22 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA 



which fall down from the surface of the water; he 

 noted that the conditions are such that, whilst dead 

 animals sink from the surface to the bottom, they do 

 not rise from the bottom to the surface ; and he brought 

 evidence forward in support of the view that the deep- 

 sea fauna is directly derived from shallow-water forms. 

 In the same year in which Wallich traversed the 

 Atlantic, the telegraph cable between Sardinia and 

 Bona, on the African coast, snapped. Under the 

 superintendence of Fleeming Jenkin, some forty miles 

 of the cable, part of it from a depth of 1,200 fathoms, 

 was recovered. Numerous animals, sponges, corals, 

 polyzoa, molluscs, and worms were brought to the 

 surface, adhering to the cable. These were examined 

 and reported upon by Professor Allman, and subse- 

 quently by Professor A. Milne Edwards ; and, as the 

 former reports, we ' must therefore regard this observa- 

 tion of Mr. Fleeming Jenkin as having afforded the 

 first absolute proof of the existence of highly organized 

 animals living at a depth of upwards of 1,000 fathoms.' 

 The investigation of the animals thus brought to the 

 surface revealed another fact of great interest, namely, 

 Jjqat some of the specimens were identical with forms 

 hitherto known only as fossils. It was thus demon- 

 strated that species hitherto regarded as extinct are 

 still living at great depths of the ocean. 



During the first half of the last century an exag- 

 gerated idea of the depth of the sea prevailed, due in 

 a large measure to the defective sounding apparatus 

 of the time. Thus Captain Durham, in 1852, recorded 

 a depth of 7,730 fathoms in the South Atlantic, and 

 Lieutenant Parker mentions one of 8,212 fathoms — 

 depths which the Challenger and the Gazelle corrected 

 to 2,412 and 2,905 fathoms respectively. The deepest 

 parts of the sea, as revealed by recent research, do 

 not lie, as many have thought, in or near the centres 

 of the great oceans, but in the neighbourhood of, or 



