SUMMARY OF RESULTS 
91 
mg for the ashes being carried such enormous distances through the air ; these difficulties 
were solved by Murray in another direction during the Challenger Expedition by the 
discovery of floating pumice 1 stones in all parts of the ocean. By treating the deposits 
with acid, Bailey showed that there is always a small quantity of mineral particles in 
organic calcareous sediments, though veiled by the preponderance of the calcareous 
element, and that the calcareous organisms increase in abundance as the Gulf Stream 
is approached. He found only imperfect casts of Foraminifera in the deposits off the 
northern coasts, the green casts being generally met with in the more southerly 
soundings. 
Maury represents the bathymetry of the Atlantic on a chart, 2 indicating by four shades Maury’s Batuy- 
of colour the depths within 1000, 2000, 3000, and 4000 fathoms. He says that the METR1CAL Chart. 
mineral particles found in the deep sea are not rolled, any more than the small 
shells associated with them, and concludes that the dynamic action of the sea 
is not felt at great depths, where the currents are too slow to move anything. 
This was an argument in favour of the cherished plan of binding the new and old worlds 
together by means of a telegraph cable, to which he often refers. He was of opinion 
that the mechanical actions which modify continental surfaces : the various effects of 
temperature, rain, wind, running water, and force of gravity, produce no effect on 
the bed of the sea. “We have,” he says, “in imagination been disposed to regard the 
waters of the sea as a great cushion placed between the air and the bottom of the 
ocean to defend and protect it from the abrading agencies of the atmosphere.” The 
deeps and shallows of the ocean would remain unchanged were it not for the microscopic 
organisms incessantly drawing from the sea- water the elements in solution to construct 
their solid envelopes, and' these being showered upon the bottom and accumulating 
there. He estimated the part taken by calcareous and siliceous microscopic organisms Do Microscopic 
in pelagic deposits, based upon Bailey's observations. He agrees with Bailey that the >: 
animalculse, whose remains are found at the bottom of the sea, lived in the surface Deposits Live in 
waters ; but he carries the idea too far when he asserts that the absence of light, low 
temperature, and pressure, preclude the possibility of life in very deep water. Ehrenberg Bottom of the 
held the opposite opinion regarding the habitat of these microscopic organisms, pointing 
out the presence of organic substances in the shells dredged from the bottom of the 
sea, and that some forms in the deposits were to be found nowhere else. Murray’s 
tow-net observations have since proved that the most abundant of these shells from the 
bottom live in the surface waters. 
In 1857 Captain Dayman sounded across the North Atlantic in H.M.S. “ Cyclops,” Dayman’s Soun - 
along the great circle between Valentia and Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, a little to the 
Plateau. 
1 See Murray, Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. ix. p, 247, 1B77 ; Murray and Renard, Deep-Sea Deposits Chall. Exp., 
pp. 294 d seq., 1891. 2 Maury, op. cit., pi. xi. 
