Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/351

Rh deep is at and near the surface. On the contrary, others maintain, and perhaps with equal reason, the biotic side of the question. Professor Ehrenberg, of Berlin, is of this latter class.

605. The question stated.—This is an interesting question. It is a new one; and it belongs to that class of questions which mere discussion helps to settle. It is therefore desirable to state both sides—present all the known facts; and then, provided with such lights as they afford, we may draw conclusions.

606. The arguments of the biotics.—As soon as the deep-sea specimens were mounted on the slides of the microscope, the two great masters of that instrument in Europe and America—Bailey of West Point, and Ehrenberg of Berlin—discovered the greater part of the small calcareous carapaces to be filled with a soft pulp, which both admitted to be fleshy matter. From this fact the German argued that there is life at the bottom of the deep sea; the American (§ 587), that there is only death and repose there.

607. Ehrenherg's statement of them.—"The other argument," says Ehrenberg, "for life in the deep which I have established is the surprising quantity of new forms which are wanting in other parts of the sea. If the bottom were nothing but the sediment of the troubled sea, like the fall of snow in the air, and if the biolithic curves of the bottom were nothing else than the product of the currents of the sea which heap up the flakes, similarly to the glaciers, there would necessarily be much less of unknown and peculiar forms in the depths. The surface and the borders of the sea are much more productive and much more extended than the depths ; hence the forms peculiar to the depths should not be perceived. The great quantity of peculiar forms and of soft bodies existing in the innumerable carapaces, accompanied by the observation of the number of unknowns, increasing with the depths—these are the arguments which seem to me to hold firmly to the opinion of stationary life at the bottom of the deep sea."

608. The anti-biotic view.—The anti-biotics, on the other hand, quoted the observations of Professor Forbes, who has shown that, the deeper you go in the littoral waters of the Mediterranean, the fewer are the living forms. 609. Their arguments hosed on the tides.—As for the number of unknowns increasing with the depth (§ 607), they contend that the tides, the currents, and the agitation of the waves all reach to