The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-09-27

In the fables and legends of the peo-
| pies there sounds and resounds a stead
| lily recurring strain-the motive" of
/ the water, from which all sorts of good
| things came to man.
In the blue past, when all things
| still swan in mist, wise fish folk arose
out of the deep in the Orient and
taught brave truths, which still remain
partly unobeyed by evil humaqity.
! Kind heroes came to the cultured ma
tions of Central America over the sea.
Kind heroes sailed over the ocean to
the nations in North America, dragged
them from the morass OF bar b lrism,
and behaved themselves much more
respectfully than was the case later
with the real visitors from the East,
the Spaniards. Shipwrecked men
found wise nymphs on lonely islands,
who gave them anSbrosia to eat and
solved for them the riddles of the fu-
ture.
For us also there arises many a
truth cut of the waters. Especially 30
the more we advance on the things of
the world as naturalists.
The wave, which fawns at our feet
and sea stars in our path, ever and
again, now here, now there, drags in
a good building stone that helps to
build further on the proud structure
of unfettered world and nature study
To the toll that gnaws rocks in order
to deposit fine mud there, later to
harden itself again to rock, we owe
almost our entire knowledge Of the
long-gone life of the world, because
animal and plant remains have been
preserved in this mud that turned to
stone.
And. conversely, we would hardly
understand these remnants of a past
that lies probably millions of years be-
hind us, if the animal and plant world
in fresh and salt waters to-day did not
give us the richest of material for di-
rect recognition of past forms.
Our Ocean Cradle.
In the water there was perhaps,
the cradle of life. There surely 1t hrst
reached DEVELOPMENT and attained GER
tain first and great goals of eVolutlon'
and in it to-day there grow and flour
lsh a mass of the strangest, most IN
structive animal forms-among them
many survivors of the older forms
that we seek in past epochs, and m
whom we seek the ancestors OF the
animals of to-day.
With truth has it been said that the
whole science of zoology and biology
of the past sixty years is in 1.-The sign
of the water Within a short time
geological stations have appeared on
ocean bights and fresh water seas,
true "observatories of the water" as
somebody calls them in jest; only they
hunt not for fixed stars and comets,
but for sea-stars and other representa-
IF
prickle-skins, that are without repre-
sentative on the land: or they hunt
for those splendid stars of the mid
night sea. the medusas and sea man.
ties, that produce the magnificent en-
chantment of the glowing of the deep
Man has forced himself with cum
ming apparatus into the chasms of the
ocean holes, where, in ever stormless
water, the sea lilies (moSt dainty ami
mails and not lilies at alb wave their
tender stems; where gigantic mol
lusks creep; where crabs, some en-
tirely blind, some with eyes colossal,
TEEN In darkness that is illuminated
only when a lamp-fish darts along
wrapped in phantasmal emerald glows
But now that this is all under way,
the appetite grows naturally with the
eating. How many seas lie still I'M
explored? How many networks Of
streams in the lowlands of far regions
may hide the most wonderful material
for botanical. geological. Darwinistic
study?
That expedition of the Challenger
has already led us to the Southern
Hemisphere of the earth.
The "PrOmised Land"
And there lies the Promised Land
of all longing seekers after natures
secrets-Australia.
Since July IA, ITO, when Cook and