The Forrest City times., 1893-06-30
A5YSMAL DEPTHS OF THE SEA.
Beauties Revealed by the Slime at the Bot
 tom of the Ocean.

The new submarine world now ex- plored and mapped out presents a very dlfferent picture from that painted for us by the poets. But a short time has elapsed since the bottom of the ocean was supposed to be the counterpart of the face of the earth above water-with hills and valley, y,with precipitous noun talns lifting toward the surface and profound gorges sinking to unfathom-
 able depths. The ocean floor is far less diversified than the land Here and there, to be sure, islands in mid ocean are the summits of enormous mountains, rising more or less ab- ruptly from a generally level sur face, and the sea lying over narrow, depressed region in northwestern Pacific reaches its great est depth. But this is exceptional; in its general character the ocean bottom consists of vast flat or slightly un- dulating plains. An extraordinary cir constance that has been noticed with interest, and that always creates sur prise when first learned, is the entire absence of foreign matters 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 perished, of all the clay, sand and gravel let fall by dissolving icebergs, of all the various substances drifted from every shore by shifting currents-nota a trace remains; but in their place water from one thousand to two thousand five hundred fathoms in depth covers the uni form deposit of thick, bluish. tenacious slime, called globigerina ooze. A bit of this under powerful lens is a reve- lation of beauty not readily forgotten. The ooze is composed almost entirely of the daintiest, most delicately beau tiful shells imaginable. At depths greater than twenty-five hundred fathoms the bottom of the sea consist mainly of products arising from ex- posture, 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 consid- cred characteristic of the profoundest depths of the ocean. Carbonate 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 tremendous abysms 1t is chemically eaten up, literally dis solved-a result which the enormous pressure of the water must materially hasten. At one thousand fathoms the weight of the water pressing on all sides of an object immersed to that depth is very 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 noth- ing could withstand it-in fact, heavy metal cylinders let down with the sounding apparatus are sometimes, on being drawn up again to the surface, found bent and collapsed; strongly made glass vessels which the metal in- closed are shattered into fragments.
 In the profoundest abysms of the sea are strange 1or!ns or llle lildI heNel' 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 esta blished the fact that forms of sea life inha biting the upper waters may descend to about twelve hundred feet from the surface, but that below this to a depth of three hundred or three hundred and sixty fathoms barren zone intervenes, where marine life seems absent. But still deeper, strange to say, has been discovered an abundant and varied fauna, new to science, living under conditions ot tre- mendous pressure and paucity ot the life-sustaining element of oxygen.- Cosmopolitan.