16 
Covering nearly three-quarters of the globe’s surface with a mean depth, 
as calculated by La Place, of 1000 yards, the ocean has its mountains and 
valleys—the depth of some of the latter probably equal the height of the 
highest mountains of the land. It has been frequently sounded to 1000 
and 1200 fathoms, and in a few instances, to the depth of two and two and 
a-half miles and more, without reaching the bottom. Can we come to the 
conclusion that the immense area of an element so suitable for the main¬ 
tenance of animal life, is only a desert ? Is such a conclusion in harmony 
with the recognised dispensations of the Great Creator, or even with facts, 
as far as facts can be brought to bear on the question ? At whatever 
depths man has been enabled to gather knowledge, there he has found 
evidence of organic existences; wherever the sea can be sounded, fragments 
of shells come up with the armed lead. The spermaceti whale finds his 
pastures, as Beale supposes, hundreds of fathoms deep down, and he is car¬ 
nivorous. Darwin, in his Zoology of the Beagle’s Voyages, 1832 and 1836, 
not only expresses his astonishment at the abundance of living creatures, 
both fish and fowl, great and small, in the upper strata and on the sur¬ 
face of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from land, but describes with 
wonder, the vast submarine forests off the coasts of Terra del Fuego, 
swarming, at considerable depths, with animals of the Crustacea, nereides, 
holutheria, &c. For the profusion of life, he likens them to the inter- 
tropical forests on the land. Then there is the Sargossa* Sea, or sea of 
weeds, occupying the very centre of the Atlantic, and showing by the 
gnawed and broken stems of its fuci, that the whole grows at the bottom 
of that probably deepest part of the ocean. Where is vegetable life, 
there also may be animal life; and indeed we have ample proof in the 
corallines, madrepores, and various tribes of the mollusca, that the lower 
forms of organization abound in the depths of the sea. 
It may be objected, that the pressure of the water is so great, even at a 
thousand fathoms, as to preclude the probability of the habitual existence 
* The part of the Atlantic Ocean bearing this name is that central portion distin¬ 
guished by the weed called “Fucus natans.” The name was given by the early Portu¬ 
guese navigators, who call it Sarga 9 ao or Sargasso, from the form of the seedpods or 
fruit of the plant which have been called tropical grapes. The fucus natans occupies 
a tract between 18° and 37° N. lat., and 33° and 43° W. long., more than 1200 miles long 
and 400 or 500 miles wide. This space is commonly studded over, like an inundated 
meadow, with the bunches which are in some places very abundant, and in others 
more dispersed. If we could imagine the surface of a wide extended moor, covered 
with water, the furze and heath bushes would appear something like the clusters of fucus 
scattered over the thickest part of the sea. Eor further description, and also for the 
reasons leading to the conclusion that the weed grows at the bottom, in the geographical 
position above indicated, the reader is referred to Purdy’s Memoir of the Atlantic. 
