The dark concealed interior of the sea
becomes thus invested with a fresh mystery; its vast recesses
appear to be stored with all imaginable forms; and we are tempted
to think there must be multitudes of living creatures whose very
figure and structure have never yet been suspected.
"'O sea! old sea! who yet knows half
Of thy wonders or thy pride!'"
GOSSE'S AQUARIUM, pp. 226, 227.
These words have more than fulfilled themselves since they were
written. Those Deep-Sea dredgings, of which a detailed account
will be found in Dr. Wyville Thomson's new and most beautiful book,
"The Depths of the Sea," have disclosed, of late years, wonders of
the deep even more strange and more multitudinous than the wonders
of the shore. The time is past when we thought ourselves bound to
believe, with Professor Edward Forbes, that only some hundred
fathoms down, the inhabitants of the sea-bottom "become more and
more modified, and fewer and fewer, indicating our approach towards
an abyss where life is either extinguished, or exhibits but a few
sparks to mark it's lingering presence."
Neither now need we indulge in another theory which had a certain
grandeur in it, and was not so absurd as it looks at first sight, -
namely, that, as Dr. Wyville Thomson puts it, picturesquely enough,
"in going down the sea water became, under the pressure, gradually
heavier and heavier, and that all the loose things floated at
different levels, according to their specific weight, - skeletons
of men, anchors and shot and cannon, and last of all the broad gold
pieces lost in the wreck of many a galleon off the Spanish Main;
the whole forming a kind of 'false bottom' to the ocean, beneath
which there lay all the depth of clear still water, which was
heavier than molten gold.
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