44 
Mr Stevenson on the Bed of ‘the 
grease. — What the navigator has yet been able to discover re- 
garding the depth and the nature of the bottom of the German 
Ocean, 1 shall now endeavour to notice, being myself enabled to 
offer the result of a pretty extensive acquaintance with this field 
of enquiry. 
It may be necessary to premise, in treating of a subject so 
extensive, and in comparing great things with' small, that we are 
obliged to speak of the North Sea as a bay or basin, and of the 
immense collection of debris which we meet with, extending 
over a great proportion of its bottom, under the common ap- 
pellation of Sand-Banks. We must also be allowed to consider 
the undulating line, or the irregularities of the bottom, to arise 
chiefly from the accumulation of deposited matters ; and in most 
of the situations connected with these banks, we are supported 
and borne out in this conclusion, by their local positions rela- 
tively to the openings of friths, and the line of their direction 
in regard to the set or current of the ebb tide. 
The accompanying Map (Plate II.) of the eastern coast of 
Great Britain, with the opposite Continent, though upon a 
small scale, exhibits numerous soundings of the depth of the 
German Ocean ; and the sections delineated on it will perhaps 
be found to give a pretty distinct view of the subject. This 
chart extends from the coast of France, in latitude 50® 57' 
to 61° N. On the east, this great basin is bounded by Den- 
mark and Norway, on the west by the British Isles, on the south 
by Germany, Holland and France, and on the north by the 
Shetland Islands and the Great Northern or Arctic Ocean. The 
term German Ocean^ though in very common use, is certainly 
not so comprehensive in its application to this great basin as that 
of North Sea^ now more generally used by the navigator. The 
extent of this sea from south to north, between the parallels of 
latitude quoted above, is 233 leagues, and its greatest breadth 
from west to east, reckoning from St Abb’s-Head, on the coast 
of Scotland, to Ring Kiobing Froid, on the opposite shore of 
Denmark, is 1 35 leagues. The greatest depth of the water in 
this basin seems to be upon the Norwegian side, where the 
soundings give 190 fathoms ; but the mean depth of the whole 
may be stated at only about 31 fathoms. 
