ON thp: deluge. 



675 



related by Scoresby with what has been found by those who 

 liave sounded to great depths ; and with my own practical ex« 

 perience in sounding — has induced me to think that man never 

 will reach the lowest depths of the deepest oceans by any method 

 his ingenuity may contrive; — because the water increases in 

 density with the depth, in a ratio perhaps more than arithme- 

 tical. Every seaman knows that in sounding at great depths 

 very heavy leads must be used with ordinary lines, or very 

 thin lines with ordinary leads ; the object being the same — that 

 of overcoming the augmenting buoyancy of the line by a weight 

 unusually heavy. But line, such as is used for sounding, is 

 not buoyant at the surface of the sea ; a coil of it thrown over- 

 board sinks directly. Then what is it that causes any weight 

 attached to a sounding-line to sink slower and more slowly, 



and, consequently, in a very dense state. Let us now inquire how increasing' 

 density (from compression alone) might aiFect an apparatus sent down 

 by a weight, in order to reach the bottom, presuming that the solids 

 composing the float and sinker were incompressible, and retained their 

 form and magnitude during the operation. 



" Let bees'- wax be a float, and cast-iron a sinker, and let each, for illus- 

 tration, be one cubic foot in dimensions. Let it be possible that at some 

 depth water may be compressed into one-fourth of its bulk at the surface, 

 and still retain the properties of a fluid ; let it also be granted that a 

 solid will swim if specifically lighter than the contiguous fluid, and sink 

 if heavier than an equal volume of the fluid. The specific gravity of 

 bees'-wax is stated to be 964 ; that of cast iron, 7248; and that of sea- 

 water at the surface, 1028 : hence the buoyancy of wax immersed in sea- 

 water at the surface, may be called 64, and the tendency of cast-iron to 

 sink, from the same surface, 6220. Deducting 64, we have 6156 as the 

 whole tendency of the mass (wax attached to iron) to sink from the sur- 

 face. Let us now suppose that the machine has attained a depth where 

 the water is compressed into a four-fold density, represented by 4112 for 

 a cubic foot ; and we have 3148 for the tendency of the wax to float, but 

 only 3136 for the tendency of the iron to sink : and the inclination to 

 ascend rather than descend, might be represented by 12. Thus we see 

 that an apparatus may not be certain of arriving at the bottom of an 

 ocean : as in an opposite manner, a balloon may not reach the highest 

 regions of the atmosphere. Either machine could only attain a position 

 where there would be no tendency either to descend or ascend. 



Plymouth, 24th Feb. 1837. ' " William Walkkr." 



* Scoresby's Arctic Regions. 



X ^ 



