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wishes for the prosperity of the Washington Institution, and the continued pros¬ 
perity of your great and increasing nation. 
I have the honor to be, sir, your most obedient servant, 
ISAAC WELD. 
Letter from Lieutenant Maury . 
To Francis Markoe, Jr., Esq., 
Corresponding Secretary of the National Institution . 
Fredericksburg, (Va,) Dec. 5, 1840. 
Sir: Be so good as to convey to the members of the National Institution for 
the Promotion of Science, established at Washington, my acknowledgments of the 
honor of being elected a Corresponding Member of the Institution. 
The favorable auspices under which this Institution has commenced, and the 
peculiar advantages which it possesses in the zeal and commanding influence of its 
Directors, and many of its members, give to Science the promise of an abundant 
and rich harvest from the sea as well as from the land. 
To explore the bottom of the ocean along our own coasts, in search of sub¬ 
marine forests, beds of shell-fish, and other treasures of the deep, would be a 
magnificent undertaking. The field there presented, is rich and rare; and among 
the more obvious advantages for making collections, the facilities enjoyed for turn¬ 
ing laborers into this field have doubtless not escaped the attention of the Institu¬ 
tion. The officers of the West India squadron, and, I doubt not, those too of 
the revenue service, have willing hearts and ready hands. They have but to learn 
how, consistently with their duties, they may promote the objects of such an In¬ 
stitution. The fifteen or twenty revenue cutters along the seaboard, if furnished 
with “drags” to “troll” the bottom in light winds, would greatly promote the 
objects of the Institution. 
Not many years ago, the late Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, R. N. had it in con¬ 
templation to endow three Naval schools in Massachusetts. He actually made a 
Will to that effect. Each school was to be furnished with a vessel, in which the 
pupils were to cruise four months of every year, trolling from Maine to Long 
Island, in search of “unknown or hidden treasures of the deep.” Though the 
Admiral was afterwards induced to annul this Will, the provision of it alluded to 
above shows the importance which that distinguished officer attached to exploring 
the bottom of the sea. 
Any one who contemplates for the first time the marl beds of our tertiary for¬ 
mation is filled with amazement at the multitudinous remains of the animal kingdom 
which he there beholds. In wonder, he asks himself, when and where lived these 
vast quantities of animals ] Yet were this observer familiar with the bottom of the 
sea for a few leagues along the Atlantic coast, his wonderment would be turned 
rather from the past to the present—for he would there find the bottom composed, 
for miles together, of shells, whose genera and species yet live, and inhabit the 
unexplored caverns of the sea. Many of the bars and shoals along the Southern 
coast are formed almost entirely by such shells. Yet so entirely unexplored are 
the habitations of their living types that even the fisherman is a stranger to them. 
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