Читать книгу A Sack of Shakings онлайн

31 страница из 54

The character of the ocean floor at all these vast depths as revealed by the sounding-tube bringing specimens to the surface is identical—red clay—which strikes the fancy queerly as being according to most ancient legends the substance out of which our first ancestor was builded, and from whence he derived his name. Mingled with this primordial ooze is found the débris of once living forms, many of them of extinct species, or species at any rate that have never come under modern man’s observation except as fossils. The whole story, however, demands far more space than can here be allowed, but one more instance must be given of the wonders of the sea-bed in conclusion. Let a violent storm displace any considerable body of warm surface water, and lo! to take its place up rises an equal volume of cold under layers that have been resting far below the influence of the sun. Like a pestilential miasma these chill waves seize upon the myriads of the sea-folk and they die. The tale of death is incalculable, but one example is mentioned by Sir John Murray of a case of this kind off the eastern coast of North America in the spring of 1882, when a layer of dead fish and other marine animals six feet in thickness was believed to cover the ocean floor for many miles.