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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



she goes directly to the bottom, else how 

 could a dredge or a trawl be sent down 

 five miles. 



That same question was asked by the 

 sailors on the Challenger while on its 

 celebrated voyage during which material 

 was gathered for fifty volumes about the 

 sea. One of their number died and was 

 buried in particularly deep water. They 

 sent a delegation aft to ask those on the 

 quarterdeck whether Bill would go to the 

 bottom or would float around at some 

 fixed level. They also wanted to know 

 what Bill would be like when he got to 

 the bottom. 



WH£N SHIPS IMPLODE 



One of the strange things that happen 

 when ships sink is that implosions occur. 

 These are inward burstings, often with 

 a force as tremendous as the outward 

 burstings caused by explosions of gun- 

 powder. As the ship sinks into deep 

 water, air-chambers that do not fill up 

 are burst inward with a force propor- 

 tionate to their resistance. If there be 

 corked bottles in the stores that are not 

 entirely full, the corks are driven in or 

 the bottles burst. 



With what force these implosions occur 

 may be gathered from an experience of 

 a scientific expedition. A thermometer 

 was let down into very deep water, 

 wrapped in protecting cloth. When the 

 line was drawn up the cloth contained no 



thermometer. Instead it contained a lot 

 of impalpable white stuff resembling 

 snow. The implosion had not shivered 

 the thermometer into the proverbial thou- 

 sand pieces ; it had simply transformed 

 it into dust. Wood sent to the bottom of 

 the deep places of the ocean has its very 

 cells invaded and crushed and loses its 

 buoyancy. 



These are but a few outstanding phases 

 of the wonders of the wonderful sea. 

 They are only random paragraphs gath- 

 ered from the remarkable chapters of the 

 great Book of Nature that tells us of Old 

 Ocean and his marvelous ways. The 

 elder days of the becalmed mariners in 

 the Doldrums are gone, and their amaz- 

 ing tales of Flying Dutchman and Wan- 

 dering Jew, of ships that float about for- 

 ever, bleached of canvas and rotten of 

 rigging, with decks peopled by ghosts and 

 skeletons — these are but classic myths, 

 just as are the stories of corposants and 

 monsters, recognized by all as such. 



But the oceanographer has mysteries 

 and problems to solve that make even the 

 riotous imagination of the seasoned old 

 salt seem tame in comparison. In the 

 years ahead, America, with the Stars and 

 Stripes gladdening every horizon, gleam- 

 ing in every port, will vie with the mari- 

 time nations of Europe in promoting the 

 efforts of the geographers of the sea to 

 fathom its mysteries and increase its in- 

 comparable service to mankind.* 



FOOD FOR OUR ALLIES IN 1919 



By Herbert Hoover 



United States Food Administrator 



THERE is small prospect of a 

 proper ending of the war before 

 the campaign of the summer of 

 1919. Three and a half million fighting 

 men of America, provided with the great- 

 est mechanical equipment that has ever 

 been given to any army, are being sent to 

 France to attain that victory. 



Even if Germany should suddenly col- 

 lapse, however, and autocracy be com- 

 pletely overthrown sooner than now 



seems possible, the food problems of our 

 Allies would remain unimproved, for 

 America is the only quickly accessible 

 reservoir available for the urgent 

 needs of France, Belgium, Britain, Italy, 



* The attention of the members of the Na- 

 tional Geographic Society is called to an 

 article on "The Gem of the Ocean : Our 

 American Navy," by Josephus Daniels, Secre- 

 tary of the Navy, in the Geographic for April, 

 1918, and to Rear Admiral Pillsbury's "The 

 Gulf Stream," in the August, 1912, number. 



