The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-06-30
AbYsMAL DEPTHS OF THE SEA.
Beauties Revealed by the Slime at the Bot
tom of the Ocean.


Beauties Reveaied by the Slime at the Bot
tom Of the Ocean.
The new submarine world now ex-
plored and mapped out presents very
different picture from that painted for
us by the poets. But 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, with precipitous noun
tains 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 SUBMITS of enormous
mountains. rising more or less alb
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 fat or slightly un-
dulating plains. An extraordinary cir
cumstance 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
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-nota
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, BLUSH tenacious
slime, called globigerina ooze. bit
of this under powerful lens is reve-
lation of beauty not readily forgotten.
The ooze is composed almost entirely
of the daintiest, most dclicatelv 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 She 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 a universal solvent, and before
any shell, large or small, reaches the
bottom of these tremendous abysmS it
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 moth
ing could Withstand tin 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 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 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 of ire
mendous pressure and paucity of the
DEMONSTRATING element of oxygen
Cosmopolitan.