Although the water at the surface was so strongly tinged with red that wide expanses of it could be seen for several miles from the ship, the tow net at the surface recovered very few specimens of the Diatom. When lowered, however, for only a few minutes to a depth of ten fathoms, it came up glutted with a mass of these highly coloured organisms. If they had been present to the same extent on the surface, the water must have acquired a colour as vivid as that of fresh arterial blood.

But the most widely distributed organisms in the upper stratum of ocean water are the larvæ of crustacea, or certain kinds of shell fish in the earlier stages of their development. These larvæ go through a process of diurnal migration, rising to the surface as daylight disappears, and sinking again as it returns, in order to remain in perpetual gloom. Gatherings with a tow net at the surface are consequently always richer at night than during the day. Large catches, however, can be made in daylight by fishing at a depth of fifteen to thirty fathoms. These few vertical fathoms through which the larvæ pass represent climatic changes of some thousands of miles horizontally at the surface; for at night on the surface they live in water heated to 80° or 85°, while during the day, at a depth of only twenty fathoms, they have to put up with a temperature of 55° to 65°.

As a result of his scientific investigations on board the Lightning and the Porcupine, Sir C. Wyville Thomson wrote in 1873: The fauna of the deep sea are more rich and varied, and have organisms in many cases more elaborately and delicately formed, and more exquisitely beautiful in their soft shades of colouring and in the rainbow tints of their wonderful phosphorescence, than the fauna of the wellknown belt of shallow water which fringes the land.' But later researches have proved that this description is only true of deep-sea animals on the outskirts of the great ocean basins, for the farther they wander from shallow water, the poorer they become. The conditions under which they have to live in the abysmal areas seem very unfavourable to animal existence. The temperature at the bottom of the ocean is nearly down to freezing point, and sometimes actually below it. There is a total absence of light, as far as sunlight is concerned, and there is an enormous pressure, reckoned at about one ton to the square inch in every 1,000 fathoms, which is 160 times greater than that of the atmosphere we live in. At 2,500 fathoms the pressure is thirty times more powerful than the steam pressure of a locomotive when drawing a train. As late as 1880 a leading zoologist explained the existence of deep-sea animals at such depths by assuming that their bodies were composed of solids and liquids of great density, and contained no air. This, however, is not the case with deep-sea fish, which are provided with air-inflated swimming bladders. If one of these fish, in full chase after its prey, happens to ascend beyond a certain level, its bladder becomes distended with the decreased pressure, and carries it, in spite of all its

efforts, still higher in its course. In fact, members of this unfortunate class are liable to become victims to the unusual accident of falling upwards, and no doubt meet with a violent death soon after leaving their accustomed level, and long before their bodies reach the surface in a distorted and unnatural state. Even ground sharks, brought up from a depth of no more than 500 fathoms, expire before they gain the surface.

The fauna of the deep sea-with a few exceptions hitherto only known as fossils are new and specially modified forms of families and genera inhabiting shallow waters in modern times, and have been driven down to the depths of the ocean by their more powerful rivals in the battle of life, much as the ancient Britons were compelled to withdraw to the barren and inaccessible fastnesses of Wales. Some of their organs have undergone considerable modification in correspondence to the changed conditions of their new habitats. Thus down to 900 fathoms their eyes have generally become enlarged, to make the best of the faint light which may possibly penetrate there. After 1,000 fathoms these organs are either still further enlarged or so greatly reduced that in some species they disappear altogether and are replaced by enormously long feelers. The only light at great depths which would enable large eyes to be of any service is the phosphorescence given out by deep-sea animals. We know that at the surface this light is often very powerful, and Sir Wyville Thomson has recorded one occasion on which the sea at night was a perfect blaze of phosphorescence, so strong that lights and shadows were thrown on the sails and it was easy to read the smallest print.' It is thought possible by several naturalists that certain portions of the sea bottom may be as brilliantly illumined by this sort of light as the streets of a European city after sunset. Some deep-sea fish have two parallel rows of small circular phosphorescent organs running along the whole length of their bodies, and as they glide through the dark waters of the profound abysses they must look like model mailships with rows of shining portholes.

It was at one time held that the temperature of the ocean never descended lower than 39° Fahr., but this unfounded assumption was disproved by the Challenger expedition. As low a temperature as 27° has been obtained in the South Atlantic in the neighbourhood of icebergs. The freezing point of salt water is 25° Fahr., and the fact that it contracts steadily down to freezing point instead of expanding again like fresh water when within 4° of it, causes the coldest water to sink always to the bottom. In a sounding of 2,900 fathoms taken in the South Atlantic, the bottom temperature was 32°, and the last 1,000 fathoms might be described as absolutely glacial. The second 1,000 fathoms consisted of water from 32° to 3610, and in the course of the next 500 fathoms the temperature rose to 40°. The remaining 400 fathoms constituted the warm upper

stratum of water, 40° being the limit at which the sun's rays exert any direct heating influence.

In the North Atlantic no lower temperature than 35° is found, and the warm stratum, instead of being only 400 fathoms, is 800 or 900 fathoms deep. One reason for this comparatively high temperature is that a ridge runs at the bottom of the sea right across the ocean from Greenland to Norway, rising above the surface to form Iceland. This ridge is of such a height that the deeper and colder parts of the Arctic basin are unable to communicate with the North Atlantic. Dr. Nansen states that the soundings taken by the Fram, whilst drifting with the ice, gave a depth of between 1,600 and 1,900 fathoms, and he thinks that the whole Polar Basin should be considered as a continuation of the deep channel which runs between Spitzbergen and Greenland from what he calls the North Atlantic Ocean. In Norwegian charts the North Atlantic may reach as far as Spitzbergen, instead of terminating, as in English charts, at the latitude of Iceland. But as the Doctor's words are liable to misinterpretation, it is as well to point out that no deep channel exists connecting the Arctic Ocean with the main portion of the North Atlantic Ocean.

The increased depth of the warm stratum is also due to the fact that the waters of tropical latitudes have been heated by the Gulf Stream or Florida current. The Gulf Stream itself dies out in mid-Atlantic, losing its movement, warmth, and deep colour, and becoming mere surface drift. But the ocean water it has heated, gaining a greater specific gravity under the evaporating action of the dry trade winds, sinks downwards, and, mingling with the cooler water below, extends the depth of the warm stratum to 800 or 900 fathoms. The warm stratum is then carried northward by the vertical circulation of the ocean, the cold bottom water from the poles rising near the equator, and the warm surface water from the equator sinking near the poles. This action is attested by the fact that the plane of 40° of temperature rises at the equator from 700 to only 300 fathoms from the surface.

To the vertical circulation of ocean water North-western Europe owes its climate. Without it, England would be subject to the same low temperature as Labrador, and all the Norwegian harbours would be ice-blocked. The temperature of the atmosphere at the North Cape, in Norway, is 1410 below zero, while the temperature of the sea is several degrees above it. The great thickness of the warm stratum enables it to resist for a long time the cold air of northern latitudes, and below the cold ice-water covering the surface of the Polar Sea Dr. Nansen found a deep layer of warmer and salter water, which still preserved a temperature of one degree above freezing-point. The Pacific Ocean, owing to its wider area and to the absence of any such heating agency as the Gulf Stream, is filled to a very large extent with water of glacial or sub-glacial coldness. Surface temperatures taken on the

west coast of South America at Payta, 5° south of the equator, and at Coquimbo, 30° south, were found to be the same, 631° Fahr.

As a result of the many careful and systematic deep-sea investigations, there is an almost universal consensus of opinion among leading scientists in favour of the permanence of the great ocean basins. Geologists divide the world into three areas :

(1) The abysmal area, from 1,000 fathoms below the sea level downwards.

(2) The transitional area, from 1,000 fathoms below the sea level upwards to the sea level.

(3) The continental area, including all dry land.

For practical purposes the sea level may be taken as a constant figure, although, even in the same latitudes of one and the same ocean it is not always the same distance from the centre of the globe. The waters of the ocean are attracted by the proximity of huge land ridges, just as the water in a glass is drawn up at the edges. It is calculated that the surface of the Pacific Ocean is 2,000 feet nearer the earth's centre at the Sandwich Islands than on the coast of Peru. At the present epoch the sea level stands at such a height in the transitional area that its rise or fall would flood or lay bare the largest surface of land. If the level rose only 100 fathoms, fourteen million square miles of land would be submerged. If it sank to the same extent, ten million square miles would be exposed. The enormous disproportion between the mean height of the land and the mean depth of the ocean makes it impossible to believe that the land at present above the sea level has ever formed the bottom of oceans as deep and vast as those now existing, a very moderate upheaval of which would suffice to bring about a universal deluge.

ARCHER P. CROUCH.

SOME PEKING POLITICIANS

Ir is a matter of common knowledge in China that Li Hungchang, when deprived of his viceroyalty and ordered to Peking, was compelled to distribute among the Court officials and others no less a sum than eight million taels, equivalent to about one million sterling, in order to protect himself against the attacks of his political enemies. With the exception of the vastness of the amount there was nothing unusual in this proceeding, as Li has the best reason for knowing, for as a matter of fact he has at stated intervals been long in the habit of paying a very heavy tax on his many incomings to satisfy the cravings of the voracious distributors of patronage at Peking.

The East is the home of bribery and corruption, and probably in no country have these become so generally recognised a feature of official life as in China. There they flourish and abound, unchecked by morality and uninterfered with by the chief authorities, except on rare occasions when threatened exposés compel the Emperor to assume the appearance of virtuous indignation. It is true that in other Oriental countries, from Eastern Europe to Korea, they exist as part of the natural order of things: the pashas of Turkey exact all that they safely can from the fellaheen, just as Korean mandarins eke out their scanty pay from the tills of the merchants and shopkeepers within their jurisdiction; but it has been reserved to China to add a refinement to this universal system of extortion by providing a class which fattens on the illegal gains of their brethren in office.

By the political constitution of the country the Emperor is assisted in the administration of the Empire by a host of Ministers, secretaries, and subordinates. To these must be added a vast crowd of palace officials, all of whom are poorly paid, and who, like their confrères in the provinces, are dependent on what they can exact from others to support the necessary dignity of their offices. But compared with their provincial colleagues these are at a distinct disadvantage. In a provincial government every member of the hierarchy of officials, from the viceroy down to the lowest district magistrate, exercises sway over a greater or less extent of territory. The wealthier the people within his jurisdiction the better for him. A rich man is, for