OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE DEEP SEA. 39 



visit to the place on the 11th of April, 1890. We had all the op- 

 portunity to question and cross-question that could be desired. 



In conclusion, it is proper to say that the sweeping character 

 and the suddenness of these attacks of Mr. Holmes and his asso- 

 ciates upon the evidence of glacial man in America have been 

 somewhat bewildering. It has come like thunder from a clear 

 sky. One has but to go back to Mr. McGee's article in The Popu- 

 lar Science Monthly for November, 1888, to find an unquestioning 

 and enthusiastic indorsement of nearly all the facts concerning 

 glacial man which I have incorporated in my recent volume upon 

 Man and the Glacial Period, together with a number which I have 

 omitted, except the discovery at Newcomerstown, which had not 

 then been made. Had I been aware of the preparations which 

 these investigators were making to discredit all past observers on 

 the matter, I should have introduced more detailed evidence in my 

 summary in the volume referred to. Still, it is probably as well 

 that the statements were left as they are, for they are all capable 

 of ample proof ; and it is perhaps better for the public to be re- 

 ferred for details to such fuller reports as are made in this article 

 and in the other publications here indicated. 



I submit that this evidence is neither " chaotic " nor " unsatis- 

 factory," but is as specific and definite and as worthy to be be- 

 lieved as almost anything any expert in this country, or any other 

 country, can be expected to produce. 



-♦**- 



GROWTH OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE DEEP SEA. 



By G. W. LITTLEHALES, 



CHIEF OF THE DIVISION OF CHART CONSTRUCTION, UNITED STATES HYDROGRAPHIC OFFICE. 



BEFORE the time of the project for the Atlantic telegraph 

 cable in 1851, there seemed to be no practical value attached 

 to a knowledge of the depths of the sea, and, beyond a few doubt- 

 ful results obtained for purely scientific purposes, nothing was 

 clearly known of bathymetry, or of the geology of the sea bottom. 

 The advent of submarine cables gave rise to the necessity for an 

 accurate knowledge of the bed of the ocean where they were laid, 

 and lent a stimulus to all forms of deep-sea investigation. But 

 although our extensive and accurate knowledge of the deep sea is 

 of so late an origin, the beginnings of deep-sea research date far 

 back into antiquity. The ancients can not be said to have had 

 any definite conceptions of the deep sea. Experienced mariners, 

 like the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, must necessarily have 

 possessed some knowledge of the depths of the waters with which 

 they were familiar, but this knowledge, whatever its extent, has 



