Agnes Giberne

“ Wherever we stumble upon carbonate-of-lime, there we are on the track of Life. And the moment that we touch upon Life, even in its simplest and lowest forms, we rise to a higher level.
Hitherto, in this subject of the Mighty Deep, we have had to do with things inanimate; things without consciousness; things blindly controlled by the forces of nature. In the story of ocean-waters, of ocean-salt, of ocean-rivers, of icebergs and ice-floes, Life has no part. There is no life in a grain of sand, no life in a granite rock. ”

“ A great scheme, dimly foretold in 1842 by one far-sighted American, was stirring. Why should not the New World be united to the Old, even as Great Britain was united to the Continent? Why not bind Europe and America together by cables beneath the Ocean?
Not twenty or forty or sixty miles would this require, but two thousand miles of cable. And in any part of those two thousand miles, one slight break, one little flaw, would undo the whole. ”

“ Switzerland’s grandest glaciers dwindle into insignificance beside the enormous ice-rivers of the frozen north. When the “Humboldt Glacier” of Greenland gets to the ocean it is about forty-five miles in width. A generous gift of water indeed, from land to ocean. Another monster glacier ends in a cliff of solid ice, rising in parts to four hundred feet of height. Greenland lies under one unbroken shield of snow and ice; and the weight of this tremendous “ice-cap” presses out numberless rivers of ice from its shores into the sea. ”

“ Though few things are more wonderful than those vast rivers of air and water, pouring always in the same direction, century after century, they are perhaps less impressive from a man’s point of view than many a mere whirling eddy, which flings itself along, rousing a huge flurry of water, and soon dying out of existence. A man cannot grasp as a whole the Trades or the Roaring Forties, with their companion ocean rivers. ”

“ No ocean-weeds of any kind. Those things we have left behind us, far above.
Dead sea-weed fronds are indeed abundant, sinking slowly downward, in company with ourselves; and dead Diatoms, with dead microscopic creatures of many kinds, rain incessantly from the surface waters to the ocean’s bed. But they are far too minute for us to feel them, as they slip noiselessly past. Seeing anything, small or large, is out of the question. ”

“ From steadfast Wind-belts, giving birth to steadfast Ocean-streams, we pass naturally to those fitful storms which lash the ocean into passing passions, and to the uncertain breezes of temperate climes.
There are currents and counter-currents, breezes and contrary breezes, winds from north and south and east and west, over the whole earth. Each separate movement of air helps to stir the waters of the sea into renewed restlessness. ”

“ Think of continuous piles of these shells, many hundreds of feet in thickness, all built out of the dead shells of dying millions of tiny creatures. Deep, deep below the surface, where waves had no power, where currents were sluggish, fell a ceaseless gentle rain of these minute shells. Life had fled from each jelly inhabitant; its brief day was over; and the empty shell went quietly down, whether from near the surface or from lower depths, till it reached the ocean-bed. ”

“ This was the description given. “You look down, and see a steep irregular wall, extending deeper into the ocean than the eye can follow, and broken into lovely grottoes and holes and canals, through which small resplendent fishes of the brightest blue or gold flit fitfully between the lumps of coral. The sides of the natural grottoes are entirely covered with endless forms of tender-coloured coral, but all beautiful, and all more or less of the fingery or branching species, known as madrepores. It is really impossible to draw or describe the sight.” ”

“ SO far most of our thoughts have been given to Earth’s milder regions; where, indeed, the warm ocean water is at best but a thin slice laid over vast depths of cold water, yet where, so far as man is concerned, heat has the upper hand. In other parts, far to north and south, the Reign of Frost is a dire reality; and that chill monarch “rules the roost” in a masterful fashion, lording it over land and sea for months together, with none to resist his sway.
Wherever King Frost waves his sceptre, one result always follows. Water changes from a liquid to a solid. ”

“ Not less is the ocean-bed to be described as a world of abounding Life.
Everywhere, throughout the whole sea, in all parts, above and below and between—near the surface, on the floor, in all intermediate reaches—living creatures flourish in numbers past imagination. ”

“ A WORLD abundantly peopled. A world which holds its myriads, uncountable in kinds, beyond reckoning in numbers.
No part of the wide Ocean may be found where fishes are not, and in places, at seasons, the water positively teems with them, so that they may be said almost to hustle one another for want of space. Fishes, taken by themselves, letting alone jelly-inhabitants and shell-inhabitants and crab-inhabitants, would suffice to keep the whole sea alive. ”

“ A counteracting force, however, exists, and has already been named. Our earth-crust is in motion. Parts of it are sinking, and in those regions the ocean has the best of the contest; for fight as man may, raise walls and bulwarks and breakwaters as he will, he can but retard the inevitable. If the sinking continue, no matter how sluggishly, he must in the end be beaten, and the persistent sea will encroach upon the land’s domain. But many coasts are slowly rising, slowly lifting themselves out of the sea, slowly shaking themselves free from Ocean’s dominion ”

“ For many years scientists maintained that in such depths no life could exist, since no bodies could withstand the awful pressure. Yet we now know that frail jelly-fish, fragile shell-inhabitants, do withstand it, flourishing there by myriads.
Perhaps the fact was somewhat overlooked, that the pressure upon a living creature is not only inwards from without, but also is outwards from within. This is true of ourselves in the ocean of air, breathing air. It is true of creatures in the ocean of water, breathing water. ”

“ Large quantities of oxygen are ever present, dissolved, in the sea. It is not the water flowing through the fish’s gills, but the oxygen dissolved in that water, which carries on combustion in the body, and so keeps it in life and health.
The amount of oxygen thus obtained is small; therefore the combustion is slow; therefore the blood is cold. But if, for a very short time, all oxygen could be withdrawn from the ocean, the whole multitude of fishes therein would fast die of suffocation. Sea-water alone, without oxygen, could not keep them alive. ”

“ The outer Crust of our Earth, taking land and sea together, may be divided into three distinct parts. Like most such divisions in Nature, the one is often found to glide by gentle stages into another.
We have, first, Land, rising above the sea-level, and consisting of plains, undulations, hills, mountains. It covers altogether less than one-third of the Earth’s surface, and it is called The Continental Area, though Islands as well as Continents belong to it.
We have, secondly, the Ocean-floor under deeper parts of the Ocean; that which lies beyond a depth of about two miles. ”

“ SCATTERED through the vast Chalk-beds of Great Britain and the Continent are thousands of layers of Flint, such layers as any of us may have seen intersecting the smooth white face of Chalk Cliffs. And as with Chalk, so with Flint—we at once find ourselves upon the track of Life.
Not indeed always of animal life. Sometimes vegetable life takes its place. Though the highest Vegetables stand on a lower level than the lowest Animals, they too have Life, and thereby they are entirely apart from the whole world of inanimate Nature. ”

“ Few of us have not, at one time or another, looked down from a boat, to see golden sand, variegated pebbles, small fishes swimming about, at a considerable depth.
Thus with water, as with denser materials, transparency is merely a question of thickness. As the thickness increases, more and more rays of sunlight are taken captive, and the water becomes less and less translucent, till at length, if we could get deep enough, we should find ourselves to be surrounded with blackness.
Another feature of ocean-depths is that of immense pressure. ”

“ A sea-anemone, like a coral-polyp, has a mouth and a stomach. But unlike the coral-polyp, it has the mouth and stomach for its own use, not merely in trust for the benefit of the whole community.
When the pretty flower-like creature wishes to open itself out, it takes in a quantity of salt water. When it wishes to shut itself up, it spurts the water out, drawing its tentacles close. ”

“ These do not, like Alpine glaciers, end in rivers of water, flowing through milder climates to the ocean. The Greenland glaciers themselves reach the sea, each thrusting an enormous “foot” far into deep water. For a while, as it does so, the glacier-ice holds firmly together in a solid mass, gliding slowly over the ocean-bed, getting deeper and deeper, till only a small part of it shows above the surface.
But ice naturally floats. The upward pressure of the sea becomes increasingly great, fighting against the tenacity of the ice, and in the end old Ocean has the best of the contest. ”

“ In deep-sea regions, dark and cold, no vegetable life can possibly exist, not even the almost ubiquitous diatoms. But their remains are present in vast multitudes. As the tiny plant-life dies out, the little hard vegetable-cases sink to the ocean-bed, there to mingle with gathering muds and oozes—there, too, in the course of ages, to be transformed into Flint. ”

“ In the lower Creation, under ocean-waters, we have seen how the fierce perpetual struggle for existence goes on; how, with scarcely more than one exception, that of the mother for her little one, each creature lives and thinks and fights for itself alone. ”

“ So the Ocean, like the Land, is subject to law, knowing neither repose nor action except in obedience to Nature’s forces.
When ocean-waters lie still as a mill-pond, they do so through an exact poise of contending powers. When waves rush high and currents pour strongly, each movement is still in strict obedience to governing forces, which are themselves governed by law. Each movement is due to a long series of past movements; and each in turn helps to bring about a long series of future movements. There are no breaks in the chain. Every effect is also a cause. ”

“ Continents and parts of Ocean have, so to speak, changed places. Mountains have risen; and tablelands, high uplifted, have sunk low. [p. 111] Sea-beds have become dry land; and dry lands have become sea-beds. Rivers have carved new paths for themselves; and cataracts have worn away vast masses of rock, carrying the débris to the sea. Ocean-waves have battered down lines of cliffs, and new cliffs have emerged from under water. All these things have come about, not in a few years, but in hundreds of years, in thousands of years, some say in millions of years. ”

“ No wells or mines on land can be sunk so deep as the sailor’s plumbline in the ocean. If we add the six miles or more of the ocean’s greater depths to the five miles or more of Earth’s higher mountains, we have at most twelve miles, which, compared with the whole diameter of the Earth, must be looked upon as a mere nothing. ”

“ When passing from the stream to the outside ocean, or from the ocean to the stream, they often change in a few hours from a warm to a cool or from a cool to a warm climate. The atmosphere is ever ready to tune its mood sympathetically to that of the ocean over which it sweeps.
We know well in Great Britain that our soft south-west breezes seldom fail to bring us warmth; though we do not always remember the debt that we owe to our friend the Gulf Stream. ”

“ Thenceforward, for a little space, the jelly-speck lives in that shell, and feeds in that shell, and then it dies in that shell. When it exists no longer, down sinks the lifeless skeleton, to serve a new purpose at the bottom of the sea.
No mere shapeless lumps are these shells, flung together without care or plan. Each one, however infinitesimal in size, is a delicate and elaborate construction; each one shows the carrying out of a definite and beautiful plan. A different design serves for each species and kind of jelly-speck—not for each individual. ”

“ A calculation has been made that, in the course of a single spring, on the banks not far from Newfoundland, something like one hundred and twenty millions of cod are the result of combined British and American and French exertions.
Happily, this fish also is very prolific. An individual often produces three or four millions of eggs in a season; and as many as eight millions have been found on one fish. Here, again, immense numbers of the eggs fail to develop, immense numbers are devoured. Yet multitudes come to perfection, and the ocean is still furnished with cod. ”

“ Covered at first by a vast winding-sheet of water, they may be slowly buried under the shifting mud and sand. But in this sense the whole Crust of Earth may be called one vast sepulchre, wherein all animals that die are entombed.
People are slow to realise how modern is our knowledge of ocean-depths. About three hundred years ago a famous navigator made the first sounding which went below two hundred fathoms—that is, about one hundred feet deeper than the height of Beachy Head from the shore. He at once decided that, by a happy chance, he had alighted upon the uttermost depth in the ocean. ”