Chapter 10

It will be necessary to say a few words as to the way in which soundings are made at sea. When the bottom consists of sand, mud, or other loose matter, it is easy enough to bring specimens to the surface, and, of course, we know in such a case that the bottom has been reached, but, in the event of the bottom being hard and rocky, it is not easy to say that our sounding has been successful: and here we meet with a difficulty which unfortunately is most unsatisfactorily provided for.

The lead is "cast," as the saying goes, "armed" for this emergency. An iron sinker is made with a hollow recess in the bottom; this is filled in with tallow, and on striking the bottom any loose matter may adhere by being pressed into the tallow. If the bottom is rocky or hard we get simply an imprint in the arming, and when such a result is obtained the usual construction is that "the bottom is rocky" or hard.

Now, this seems to me a point on which chemistry may give some very valuable help, for I am convinced that no sounding should be accepted unless evidence of the bottom itself is obtained. A few considerations will show that when we are working in very deep water, where there is a difficulty of knowing for certain that we have an "up and down" sounding, and the hardening of the "arming" by the cold and pressure, unless we bring up something we cannot be sure that we have touched the bottom; leaving the doubt on this point on one side, unless we use a very heavy sinker, so as to get an indication of the released strain when it touches the bottom, we encounter another complication.

Sir William Thomson's sounding wire has added the element of reliability to our soundings in this latter case. The note given out by the wire when the bottom is reached is perceptibly different when under strain, even if the dynamometer should give an unreliable indication.

It has been found that when a "bottom" has been recovered by the arming with tallow, the adherent grease seriously detracts from the value of the specimen for scientific purposes. Washing with perfectly pure bisulphide carbon will save the sounding, but of course any living organism is destroyed. As we have plenty of contrivances for bringing up loose "bottoms" without arming, we have nothing to fear on this score.

There is a great difficulty to explain the vast accumulations of clay deposits on the ocean bed, and it has been suggested that some minute organisms may produce these deposits, as others give us carbonate of lime. Is there not a very great probability of some of the apparently insoluble rocky formations being answerable for these accumulations?

We must not forget the peculiar changes which such an apparently stable substance as feldspar undergoes when disintegrated and exposed to the chemical action of sea water. As these deposits contain both sodium and potassium, our chemical operations must provide for the analytical results; in other respects the analysis can be proceeded with according to the operator's analytical knowledge.

Few operators are aware of the usefulness of an ordinary deep sea grapnel rope, as used for cable work, in recovering specimens of the fauna of any locality. The grapnel rope should be left down for a few months, so that the denizens of the deep may get used to it and make it their place of residence and _attachment_. The stench caused by their decomposition, unless the rope be kept in water, when hauled up will be in a few days intolerable, even to an individual with a sea-going stomach. I tried several chemical solutions for preserving specimens thus recovered, but nothing answered so well as the water itself drawn up from the same depth as the rope was recovered from.--_Chem. News._

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