REPOET ON THE DEEP-SEA DEPOSITS. 
XIX 
his observations on the original character of these deposits, that the layers now found 
perpendicular, or inclined to the horizon, were horizontal at the time of their formation. 
In 1740 Ant. Lazzaro Moro developed a system in which he attributes to frequently 
recurring submarine explosions the formation of mountains, plains, and islands. Accord- 
ing to him the globe was primitively covered with water ; on the third day of creation 
the crust which formed the bottom of the sea was raised. The mountains resulting from 
this upheaval are the primitive rocks, in which no fossils are found. At a later period 
there arose from the interior of the earth lava and other substances which accumulated on 
the bottom of the sea, and were upheaved in their turn through the same agency. With 
this second phenomenon were introduced diverse substances, such as salt, sulphur, and 
bitumen. As a natural consequence the water became salt, animals were developed in 
it, the earth became peopled about the same time, and the eruptions continuing produced 
an alternation of sedimentary and eruptive deposits.^ 
Arduino divided the Paduan, the Vicentin, and the Veronese mountains into primitive, 
secondary, and tertiary. The secondary mountains are for the most part formed of com- 
pact limestone in continuous strata, and contain petrified organised bodies. These strata 
vary in hardness, fineness of grain, composition, colour, and in the species of marine 
bodies they contain, since, according to him, there is but one kind in each stratum.^ 
Marsilli ^ makes a few observations on the bathymetric knowledge then possessed 
concerning the nature of the bottom of the sea ; he admits that the basin of the sea 
was excavated “ at the time of the creation out of the same stone which we see in 
the strata of the earth, with the same interstices of clay to bind them together.” He 
adds that we should not judge of the nature of the bottom of the basins by the 
materials which seamen bring up in their soundings. They dredge almost always on 
a muddy bottom, and very rarely on a rocky one, because the latter is covered with 
slime, sand, sandy, earthy, and calcareous concretions, and organic matter. These 
substances, he says, conceal the real bottom of the sea, and have been brought there ' 
by the action of the water. These substances always cover stony masses. “ Lastly,” 
he adds, “ to explain myself briefly, I may compare the bed of the sea to a cask, 
which, having long held wine, seems from the inside to be made of dregs of tartar, 
though it is really of wood.” In the profiles which accompany his work, he has 
marked with dotted lines the stony parts of the bottom. In sea-bottoms of 
great extent, he distinguishes those which are covered with fine sand, or with a sandy 
conglutination ; the part covered with fine sand is always that exposed to the flow 
of rivers. 
1 De orostacei e degli altri marini corpi, che si trovano sui monti, Venice, 1740. 
^ Di varie minere di metalli e d’altre specie di fossili delle montane provincie Venetae, &c., Mem. Soc. Ital., tom. 
iv. 1788. 
3 Histoire physique de la mer, par L. F. comte de Marsilli, traduit par Boerhaave, Amsterdam, 1725. 
