Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1875 — Deep Sea Soundings. [ARTICLE]

Deep Sea Soundings.

In lecturing recently before the Royal Society on the Challenger expedition to the North Pole, Prof. Huxley adverted to the work which it was expected would be done in reference to the distribution of life at the bottom of the deep sea. The first instrument which successfully brought up portions of this bottom was used by Sir John Ross in 1818, seconded by Captain, afterward Sir Edward, Sabine. The result of their observations —microscopical examinations being then unknown —had not been exactly preserved, but subsequent soundings a little further north showed that the bottom was entirely made up of the skeletons or cases of diatomaceous plants and radiolaria, the silicious matter being otained from the water by the action of those plants, which cover the surface in places like a thick scum. We have thus a silicious polecap, extending to about fifty-five degrees, and it was not without reason that when iii 1839 the Admiralty fitted out an Antarctic expedition Humboldt suggested that attempts should be made to ascertain the existence of an Antarctic cap of the same nautre —a conjecture which was perfectly verified. Between these two zones Ehrenberg, so long ago that his merits were apt to be ignored, had demonstrated that the greater portion of the sea bottom was composed of globigerina marl, formed by the deposit of organisms similar to tnose now living. Whether at the bottom or not was a point which he would not decide, for Prof. Wyville Thompson and some of his colleagues were at issue on this point; but if so, certainly at the surface also. One remarkable feet was due to the Challenger investigations only, namely: that below a depth of about 14,000 feet, instead of the well-known globigerina clay, there was a red mud, which on chemical examination was found to be the same substance, of which only about 1 or 2 per cent, was discoverable in the globigerina mud —a striking instance of the power of the infinitely little. Another striking feet was the identity of the green sand now forming in certain parts pf the deep sea with the green sand long known to geologists. In conclusion the professor, without entering into any controversy with physicists, who said the forces formerly at work on the earth must have been greater than now,.

was content to affirm that within the time of which they had any record there was no proof that they were ever any greater than now. This grand truth had been first clearly maintained by Sir Charles Lyell, in whom, though he was unable to be with them, yet age had not lessened the force of his intelligence or the vivacity with which up to the age of eighty he followed the progress of knowledge, and who lived to see the heresy of his youth become the truism of his old age.