Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/344

318 infusoria of Ehrenberg) are very few in number, and mostly fragmentary. I found, however, some perfect valves of a coscinodiscus. The Foraminifera (Polythalamia of Ehrenberg) are very rare, only one perfect shell being seen, with a few fragments of others. The polycistineee are present, and some species of haliomma wore quite perfect. Fragments of other forms of this group indicate that various interesting species might be obtained if we had more of the material. You will see by the above that this deep sounding differs considerably from those obtained in the Atlantic, The Atlantic soundings were almost wholly composed of calcareous shells of the Foraminifera; these, on the contrary, contain very few Foraminifera, and are of a silicious rather than a calcareous nature. This only makes the condition of things in the Northern Atlantic the more interesting."

589. They belong to the animal, not to the vegetable or mineral kingdom.—The first noticeable thing the microscope gives of these specimens is, that nearly all of them are of the animal, few of the mineral or vegetable kingdom. The ocean teems with life, we know. Of the four elements of the old philosophers—fire, earth, air, and water—perhaps the sea most of all abounds with living creatures. The space occupied on the surface of our planet by the different families of animals and their remains seems to be inversely as the size of the individual. The smaller the animal, the greater the space occupied by its remains. Though not invariably the case, yet this rule, to a certain extent, is true, and will, therefore, answer our present purposes, which are simply those of illustration. Take the elephant and his remains, or a microscopic animal and his, and compare them. The contrast, as to space occupied, is as striking as the difference between great and small. The graveyard that would hold the remains of the coral insect is larger than the graveyard that would hold those of the elephant.

590. Quiet reigns in the depth of the sea.—We notice another practical bearing in this group of physical facts that Brooke's apparatus has fished up from the bottom of the deep sea. Bailey, with his microscope (§ 587), could detect scarcely a single particle of sand or gravel among these little mites of shells. They were from the great telegraphic plateau (§ 585), and the inference is that there, if anywhere, the waters of the sea are at rest. There was not motion enough to abrade these very delicate organisms, nor current enough to sweep them about and mix up