SUMMARY OF RESULTS. 
51 
This arrangement of the bottom of the sea is the subject of Buaehe’s work, and Contours ok Ska 
he arrives at the following conclusions: — The globe is sustained by several chains of 
mountains, which cross the sea as well as the land, and serve probably to increase ™ose of T)ry 
the solidity of the globe; the chains of mountains are the framework of the globe, >A ' N ' D ' 
repeating an idea already expressed by Father Athanasius Kircher, who considered 
these chains as the “squeletse ossatura globi.” These mountains divide the sea into 
different basins, which appear to be united merely because the mountains enclosing them 
are, for the most part, covered with water. 
The marine valleys are not all equally deep. If the water of the channel separating 
France from England were withdrawn, a ridge of mountains uniting Dover and Calais 
would be left uncovered. Were the sea to subside still further, the Scilly Isles and the 
Isle of Wight would become mountains separated from England by valleys left dry. 
Were the waters to fall 60 fathoms, England itself would become a huge mountain 
separated by a valley from Normandy, and the bottom of the channel at its opening, 
which would then extend from the Isle of Ushant to the Scilly Isles, would become the 
sea border. Supported by these examples, drawn from a part of the ocean which he had 
carefully studied, Buache concludes that islands are but the summits of the- highest 
mountains, and that they are frequently united by other mountains of less altitude, the 
existence of which has been proved by the sounding-lead. These submarine chains, 
according to the author, determine the division of the seas, and they are almost invariably 
the continuation of those we find on land. 
Buache distinguishes three great seas. He calls the Atlantic the Ocean , and retains 
the appellation Indian Sea with the meaning attached to it by his predecessors ; he calls 
the Pacific Ocean the Great Sea ; lastly, he mentions two small frozen seas in the north 
and south. He divides the three great oceans by means of his submarine mountains 
into subordinate basins ; thus the Ocean (the Atlantic) includes a sea of the North of the 
Oceoni, a sea of the North- West, and an Atlantic Sea of the Ocean. The Gulf of Mexico 
is an annex in the west, as the Mediterranean and Baltic are in the east. All these 
subdivisions refer to what we now call the North Atlantic. He did not subdivide the 
South Atlantic, but gives the whole of that part of the Atlantic the name of Southern 
Ocean of the Ocean . 
The Indian Sea comprises the Gulf of Arabia, embracing the Red Sea and the 
Persian and. Arabian Gulfs, the Gulf of Bengal, and the Archipelago of India, limited 
in the west by the submarine chain uniting the coast mountains of Burmah with the 
north-west cape of Sumatra, to which belong as a ridge-line the Andaman and Nicobar 
Islands. 
He subdivides the Great Ocean into Northern Sea of the Great Ocean, South Sea 
between the two tropics, and Southern Sea of the Great Ocean. These subdivisions, a? 
shown by Buache’s map, rest on his supposed submarine chains. This nomenclature 
