River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1890-06-26
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IN THE DEEP SEA.
Animal Life Supported Under Almost In
comprehensible Pressure.


Animal life is ultimately dependent
upon the vegetable kingdom, and that
kingdom in turn is dependent upon the
light of the sun. Miles below the ocean
surface the sun can not penetrate, or.
at AL events, vegetation, with all its
powers of bottling up the solar rays,
can not there, so far as at present
known, maintain an existence.
The water at very great depths is in
most parts of the world, near the freez-
ing-point Further, the pressure upon
every square inch of the surface of
body under three miles OF sea-water,.
instead of being about fifteen pounds,
as in atmospheric air, is three tons, or,
in other words, six thousand seven
hundred and twenty pounds 1t was
not perhaps irrational to suppose that
sponge or delicate fish would be
crushed into nothingness If each square
inch of its surface were subjected to
such weight as a score of the strong
est coal-heavers in the world would
stagger under.
1t rather humbles ones pride in the
prowess of human reason to see how
some times its apparently most cogent
and most readily accepted arguments
suddenly lose all their force when I'M
expectedly confronted with facts.
The skilled ornithologist, after
pointing out that the owl in the bar
ber's shop was so badly stuffed that it
could not be taken TO represent either
an owl or any possible member of the
bird creation, might we'll be discon-
certed when the impossibility stepped
down from its perrh and proved to be
not a stuffed owl, but live one.
Even lawyers and law-givers, theolo-
gians and political economists have oc-
casionally made mistakes, and the
votaries of natural science are also hui
man.
Now that we know that animal life
can be and is supported under enormous
pressure in the cold, dark depths, where
even kelp and sea moss take no foot
hold, reason is equal to the task Of ex-
planning how the difficulties of the
position may be encountered.
Though plants can not grow without
sunlight, yet when their life in the
upper regions of the sea is over, they
NAV sink, as diatoms undoubtedly do,
thorough all depths to the bottom.
Even If the deepest living animals
had no acess to vegetation, they might
derive the benefit of it through a chain
of consumers, ending with themselves,
but beginning with vegetable feeders.
Many of the jewellers in the deep sea
have no eyes, and are, therefore, com
paratively unaffected by the absence of
light; for others that have eyes the
gloom is relieved by the luminous or
gans which they or their neighbors
possess.
The temperature, we may be assured,
is well suited TO the permanent in
habitants of each region, so tnat those
surrounded by water nearly at the
freezing point would not u ank us for
warming ii for them, any more than the
Esquimau is please when a rise of tenn
perature sets every thing adrift in his
pavilion of ice.
The pressure, too, however stupendous
TO our Imagination, is evidently borne
without concern by creatures which are
themselves permeated by fluids of the
same density as the surrounding me-
dunn.
Though also TO our taste the chemis-
try of sea water is unpalatable, we
know that most marine animals can not
live without it; and while terrestrial
life is limited to its distribution, and
often put to sore straits by the scanty
supply of fresh water, to the denizens
of the sea the resources for the quench-
ing of thirst are always at hand, never
failing and practically infinite. -Golden
DAVIS