Custer weekly chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, S.D.) 1890-1931, 1898-02-26
THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA.
The Utter Desolation Of the Deepest Parts
OF the Underwater World.

The third monthly meeting of the
Society OF Natural Sciences was held
Tuesday evening at Good VIII hall,
says the Hartford Times. Prof. II. w.
Conn OF Wesleyan university delivered
IN interesting lecture on the Bottom
of the Sea-" Prof. Conn had n large
number of instructive views of APP
paratus used in sounding and dredging,
as well as Photographs Of many of the
u~nspeakable creatures that the dredge
has brough up. There is no sensible
amount of light at a greater depth than
800 or 400 feet, the most sensitive
Photographic plates being unaffected
even by very prolonged exposure. The
fishes are therefore obliged to hunt
their food By the aid Of dark lantern, as
Prof. Conn expressed 1t; in other words,
they are phosphorcscent, and see by
the aid of the light that they themselves
emit.
One of the great difficulties of deep
sea exploration is that it takes about all
day TO throw out one dredge and haul it
up again, ever although the line is
worked by steam power. The dredges
used until recently had a habit of be-
coming tangled with the sounding rope,
when the day was over, it was found
that the dredge had become ~entangled
Immediately upon being thrown over
board, SO that the day was entirely
wasted. The great pressure at the bot
tom of the sea (from three to six tons
on q square inch) will crush glass to a
fine powder, SO that it has been difficult
TO obtain good measures of the tenn
perature in the deepest parts. The pro.
lessor described a very ingenious ther-
moelectric apparatus, by which this diff.
hculty had been overcome.
The greater part of the bottom of the
ocean consists of red mud and of globi-
gerina ooze, the dead shells of q minute
foraminiferous creature, so abundant
that its shells make up a big part of the
ocean floor. There is no life below
three miles. In speaking of some of
the fishes that inhabit the lower depths.
the professor said hat they often "fall
upward" to the surface and are killed
by the reduction of pressure. The air
in their swimming bladders, he explain
ed. is compressed by the pressure of the
ocean into u very small space. When
INC ISu 10 SO uHWlSe rs 10 leave MS ma
tive haunts to explore regions half a
mile or so above him the diminution in
pressure causes the air to expand and
the fish becomes so buoyant that he
cannot swim back again, and the further
he rises the worse his plight becomes,
and after a time he reaches the surface,
by which time the expansion of the air
becomes so great that the fish is often
literally blown to pieces. and is found
floating about in this condition.
The professor said that in the lower
depths of the sea the quiet is so pro-
found that in comparison with it the
most barren deserts on the face of the
earth are scenes of the greatest activity;
for on the desert there are variations in
wind and in temperature, and alter
atoms of day and night, while in the
great depths of the ocean there is no
life, there are no currents, the temper
ature is uniformity 33 degrees, year in
and year out, and night reigns perpet-
ually. The surface of the ocean is the
poets favorite metaphor for unrest, but
there is nothing SO quiet and change
,ss as its profound depths.