Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1888 — Wonders of the Sea. [ARTICLE]

Wonders of the Sea.

The sea occupies three-fifths of tho surface of the earth. At the depth of 3,500 feet waves are not felt. The temperature is the same, varying only a trifle from the ice of the pole to the burning sun of the equator. A mile down the water has a pressure of a ton to the square inch. If a box six feet deep were filled with sea water and allowed to evaporate under the sun, there would be two inches of salt left at the bottom. Taking the average depth of the ocean to be three miles, there would be a layer of pure salt 230 feet thick on the Atlantic. The water is colder at the bottom than at the surface. In the many bays on the coast of Norway the water often freezes at the bottom before it does above. Waves are very deceptive; to look at them in a storm one would think the whole water traveled. The water stays in the same place, but the motion goes on. Sometimes in storms these waves are forty feet high, and travel firty miles an hour —more than twice as fast as the swiftest steamer. The distance from valley to valley is generally fifteen times the height, hence a wave five feet high will extend over seventy-five feet of water The force of the sea dashing upon Bell Rock is said to be seventeen ton* to the square yard.