25 
DEPOSITS OF THE ATLANTIC IN DEEP WATER, ETC. 
for any other limestone. Although hard in Central Europe it 
is almost as soft as in England when met with in Kussia. 
In the absence of positive knowledge as to the nature of deep 
sea mud Sir Charles Lyell and others, struck by the interesting 
observations of Mr. Darwin on coral reefs, and by some resem- 
blances between chalk and the fine mud at the bottom of coral 
lagoons, had set men’s minds thinking how far the coral animal 
and the fishes that feed on coral might be responsible for this 
variety of calcareous rock. Although the idea was plausible, 
further observation has shown that it is rather the Oolites than 
the chalk deposits that have been thus formed. Lagoons en- 
closed by coral receive beyond a doubt a vast quantity of fine 
mud that might represent chalk, but this is usually mixed with 
a far greater variety of fossils, especially of corals and bryozoa, 
and a more plentiful sprinkling of echinodermata, Crustacea, 
and even shells than are at all usual in chalk. 
It was not till the year 1858, when the British steamer 
Cyclops, commanded by Captain Dayman, following nearly in 
the course of exploration pursued by Lieutenant Berryman in 
the United States steamer Arctic, was system aticalty employed 
to take deep soundings and determine the nature of the sea 
bottom, that the real material at the bottom of deep water in 
the Atlantic was obtained and brought to the surface in quantity 
sufficient to permit of accurate observation. It was no easy or 
simple matter at first to lift even a small quantity of the 
scrapings of the sea bottom through 10,000 feet of water, but 
this has now become an ordinary and necessary result of every 
deep sounding. 
It is no part of the object of the present article to repeat the 
accounts already frequently given of the methods by which 
deep soundings and dredgings in deep water have been accom- 
plished. Various methods have been adopted, with various but 
gradually increasing success, until at last actual dredging has 
been carried on and nearly two hundredweight of the sea bottom, 
with its living inhabitants and the skeletons of the recently 
dead, has revealed a submarine life at a depth of more than 
2.000 fathoms, not less varied nor less numerous, and certainly 
not less interesting, than that which may be studied within the 
few feet of tidal range near the shore. These results have been ob- 
tained in many parts of the North Atlantic, and year by year this 
ocean bed has been more and more the subject of investigation. 
It may be well to remind the reader that between the land 
of Western Europe (including the British islands) and the east 
coast of North America (including Greenland), there is a space 
of nearly 1,500 miles of ocean, for the most part more than 
1.000 fathoms deep, but imperfectly interrupted by banks. 
These banks rise into land in Iceland and the Faroe islands, 
