212 
THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 
ical facts that Brooke's apparatus fished up from the bottom of the 
deep sea. Bailey, with his microscope 448), could not detect 
a single particle of sand or gravel among these little mites of 
shells. They were from the great telegraphic plateau 446), 
and the inference is that there, if any where, the waters of the sea 
are at rest. There was not motion enough there to abrade these 
very delicate organisms, nor current enough to sweep them about 
and mix up with them a grain of the finest sand, nor the smallest 
particle of gravel torn from the loose beds of debris that here and 
there strew the bottom of the sea. This plateau is not too deep 
for the wire to sink down and rest upon, yet it is not so shallow 
that currents, or icebergs, or any abrading force can derange the 
wire after it is once lodged. 
452. As Professor Bailey remarks, the animalculas, whose re- 
mains Brooke's lead has brought up from the bottom of the deep 
sea, probably did not live or die there. They would have had no 
light there, and, had they lived there, their frail little textures would 
have been subjected in their growth to a pressure upon them of a 
column of water twelve thousand feet high, equal to the weight of 
four hundred atmospheres. They probably lived and died near 
the surface, where they could feel the genial influences of both 
light and heat, and were buried in the lichen caves below after 
death. 
453. Brooke's lead and the microscope, therefore, it would 
seem, are about to teach us to regard the ocean in a new light. 
Its bosom, which so teems with animal life ; its face, upon which 
time writes no wrinkles — makes no impression — are, it would now 
seem, as obedient to the great law of change as is any department 
whatever, either of the animal or the vegetable kingdom. It is 
now suggested that, henceforward, we should view the surface of 
the sea as a nursery teeming with nascent organisms, its depths as 
the cemetery for families of living creatures that outnumber the 
sands on the sea-shore for multitude. 
Where there is a nursery, hard by there will be found also a 
grave-yard — such is the condition of the animal world. But it 
never occurred to us before to consider the surface of the sea as 
one wide nursery, its every ripple a cradle, and its bottom one 
vast burial-place. 
454. On those parts of the Solid portions of the earth's crust 
