, 1880-08-30
Recent Deep Sea Researches.

DR.. Carpenter, the English physicist,
has recently published in the Nineteen
tn Century" some remarkable results CT
his elaborate studies of the largest deep
sea explorations. The work of the
scientific circumnavigstion expedition
10 the Challenger, though completed
in 1876, has not until within few
months, if even now, been fully re-
duced, and some of its most important
discoveries are now announced by. DIR.
Carpenter. its originator. One of the
first questions its labors contribute to
solve Is the depth and configuratiOn of
the ocean basins. The prevailing no
tion of the sea beds, DIR. Carpenter
shows, needs considerable modification,
none of them having been carefully
outlined, except that OF the North
Atlantic when sounded with view to
aying the first Atlantic cable. "The
form of the depressed area which lodges
the water of the deep ocean," he says,
sis rather to be likened to that Of a
fiat waiter Or tea tray. surrounded by
an elevated and steeply sloping rim.
than to that of the basin with which it
is commonly compared" and he adds,
"the great continental platforms usu-
ally rise very abruptly from the mar
gins of the roal oceanic depressed
areas" The average depth of the
ocean floors is now ascertained to be
about thirteen thousand feet. As the
average height of the entire land mass
OF the globe above sea level is about
one thousand feet, and the area about
two and three quarter times that of the
land, it follows that the total volume of
ocean water is thirty-six times that of
the land above the sea level. These
deductions, seemingly unimportant ex-
cept to the votary of science, are des-
tined perhaps to serve the highest
practical purposes of future deep sea
telegraphy. The intelligence now
quarried out of the enormous collection
of later ocean researches shows the
modern engineer and capitalist the
feasibility of depositing a telegraphic
floor, and ought to give now Conscience
in the success of all such enterprises
properly devised aud equipped. When
1t is remembered that at the beginning
Of this century La Place, the great
mathematician, calculated or assumed
the average depth of the ocean at four
miles Tor eight thousand feet more
than DR.. Carpenter determines it to be
from actual surveys, and that La
Places conclusion was the received
view among scientists until 1850, or
later, We get some idea of the advance
made in this branch of terrestrial
physics by modern research. Not less
interesting is deduction DR.. Carpen-
ter makes from the deep sea tempera-
ture observations in the North Atlantic.
In consequence of the evaporation
produced by the long exposure of the
equatorial Atlantic current its water
contains such an excess Of salt as, in
spite of its high temperature, to be
specifically heavier than the colder un-
deIfiows which reach the Equator from
the opposite Arctic and Antarctic
basins; and consequently it substitutes
itself by gravitatlon for the colder
water to depth of several hundred
fathoms. "Thus it conveys the solar
heat downward in such a manner as to
make the North Atlantic between the
parallels of twenty degrees and forty
degrees great reservoir of warmth"
The climatic effect of this vertical
transfer of equatorial heat is obvious.
If the great heat-bearing currents
which enter the North Atlantic trav-
ersed its bosom as surface currents they
would expend their warmth largely in
the high latisudes. But. as their heavy
and highly heated volumes in large
measure descend to the deepest strata
south of the fortieth parallel, their
stores Of tropical temperature are per-
manently arrested off our eastern coast
and ultimately made subservient to our
climate-N. 7. Herald