The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1893-09-22
CREATURES OF OCEAN DEPTHS.
They Fail to Pieces When the Pressure OF
water No Longer Holds Them Together.

and profound gorges sinking to un-
fashionable depths. The ocean floor is
far less diversified than the land.
Here and there, to be sure, islands
In mid-ocean are the SUBMITS OF
enormous mountains, rising more
or less abruptly, from a gener-
ally level surface, and the sea
lying over narrow, depressed
region in the northwestern Paclhc
reaches its greatest depth. But
this is exceptional; in its general char
acter the ocean bottom consists of vast
fat or slightly undulating plains. An
extraordinary circumstance that has
been noticed with interest, and that
always creates surprise when first
learned, is the entire absence of for
eign matter in the deeper part OF the
oceans floor.
OF all the vessels lost in midocean;
of all the human beings that have been
drowned; of all the marine animals
that have persisted, of all the clay,
sand and gravel let fall by dissolving
icebergs; of all the various substances
drifted from every shore by shifting
currents, not q trace remains; but In
their place water from one thousand
to twenty-five hundred fathoms in
depth covers the uniform deposit of
thick, blush, tenacious slime, called
globigerina ooze. A bit of this under
a powerful lens is a revelation of beau
ty not readily forgotten. The ooze is
composed almost entirely of the dain-
tiest, most delicately beautiful shells
imaginable.
At depths greater than two thousand
five hundred fathoms the bottom of the
sea consists mainly of products arising
from exposure, for almost incalculable
periods, to the chemical action of sea
water, of pumice and other volcanic
matters. This finally results in the
formation of the red clay deposits that
are considered characteristic of the
profoundest depths of the ocean. Car
Donate of lime, which in the form of
the shells of foraminifera, makes up so
large part of the globigerina ooze, is
here almost entirely absent.
Sea water is very nearly universal
solvent, and before any shell, large or
small, reaches the bottom of these ire
mendous abysms it is chemically eaten
up, literally dissolved-a result which
the enormous pressure of the water
must materially hasten. At one thou
sand fathoms the weight of the water
pressing on all sides of an object i'm
mersed to that depth isvery nearly one
ton to the square inch, or more than one
hundred times that sustained at the
sea level, and at the greatest depths the
pressure is so increased that it would
seem nothing could withstand tin
fact, heavy metal cylinders let down
with the sounding apparatus are some
times, on being drawn up again to the
surface, found bent and collapsed;
strongly-made glass vessels which the
metal inclosed are shattered into frag
ments.
In the profoundest abysms of the sea
are strange forms of life, that never,
save when brought up by the trawl,
see the upper light. The work carried
on by means of the United States fish
commission vessel, the Albatross, has
established the fact that forms of sea
life inhabiting upper waters may de-
scend to about twelve hundred feet
from the surface, but that below this,
to depth of three hundred or three
hundred and sixty fathoms, a barren
zone intervenes where marine life
seems absent But still deeper,
strange to say, has been discov-
cred an abundant and varied
fauna, new to science, living
under conditions of tremendous
pressure, and paucity of the life-sus-
tanning element of oxygen, that in
duced an eminent zoologist to say quite
recently: what we know of the great
est, ocean depths forbids us to expect
to find them inhabited by living
organisms" Here, indeed, survive
forms of life the like of which no in
habitant of the upper world, not even
the sun himself, has looked upon be-
fore the dredges of the. Challenger, the
Albatross, the Blake, and similarly
equipped vessels dragged up marine
creatures from congenial cold and
dark.
1t might reasonably be supposed
that the denizens of great sea depths
would be built more firmly and strong
ly than surface animals to resist the
pressure of the element in which they
live, but it is just the contrary. The
most universal characteristic of these
creatures is the looseness and flabbi-
ness of texture they exhibit. Indeed,
they seem to need the Excess
sive pressure of the water about
them to keep their parts together, for
when they are brought to the surface
they are ready to fall to pieces. 1t is
problem, SO strangely are some of them
formed, how they can move from place
to place; were they not entirely below
the disturbing element of wave action
they would, to all appearance, be help
less.
Inhabiting these abyssmal spaces. as
completely cut off from communication
with the upper waters as we are from
the inhabitants of other planets, we
can only vaguely speculate on their
habits and Judge their manners of life
from their somewhat remote analogies
to the surface species nearest akin to
them. Plant life is entirely absent
from their place of abode, and although
they doubtless prey upon each other,
some original sources of food supply
must, of course, be conjectured to exist.
Cosmopolitan.
enthusiastically G,eb.e ,,aea - ra<%;~c