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Dismiss that hope, your Lordship! Let all real and imaginary Governors of England, at the pass we have arrived at, dismiss forever that fallacious fatal solace to their do-nothingism: of itself, too clearly, the leak will never stop; by human skill and energy it must be stopped, or there is nothing but the sea-bottom for us all!

Shots between these and English vessels of the same types were exchanged at long range, but a pitched battle did not come for still a week. Meanwhile the British navy had been doing its best to destroy the mine fields established by the Germans. Trawlers were sent out in pairs, dragging between them large cables which cut the mines from the sea-bottom moorings.

I ordered a rigid search of the deck, but the axe was gone. Nor was it ever found. It had taken its bloody story many fathoms deep into the old Atlantic, and hidden it, where many crimes have been hidden, in the ooze and slime of the sea-bottom. That day was memorable for more than the attack on Burns. It marked a complete revolution in my idea of the earlier crimes, and of the criminal.

Portions therefore of these clays and limestones have probably been formed contemporaneously to a greater extent than we can generally prove, for the distinctness of the species of organic beings would be caused by the difference of conditions between the more littoral and the more pelagic areas and the different depths and nature of the sea-bottom.

We have seen that this happened on the shores of the Samoa group, and therefore the way in which the sea rose and fell on the days following the great earthquake gave significant evidence of the nature of the sea-bottom in the neighborhood of these islands.

The reef-building coral must not be confounded with the precious, or red, coral, which flourishes in a muddy sea-bottom and is found chiefly in the Mediterranean Sea. When alive and in the water, coral polyps present a variety of beautiful forms and colors.

"The Colorado might break its barriers; or it is conceivable that some huge stream, taking its rise in the heights hundreds of miles north and east of us, may be flowing through subterranean passages into the sea, emerging from the sea-bottom hundreds of miles to the westward.

It is demonstrable that an animal of the cretaceous sea might die, that its skeleton might lie uncovered upon the sea-bottom long enough to lose all its outward coverings and appendages by putrefaction; and that, after this had happened, another animal might attach itself to the dead and naked skeleton, might grow to maturity, and might itself die before the calcareous mud had buried the whole.

At the same time, it became desirable to ascertain and to indicate the nature of the sea-bottom, since this circumstance greatly affects its goodness as holding ground for anchors.

On the other hand, a carcass washed by a flood into a shallow part of the Arctic Sea, would be preserved for an indefinite period, if it were soon afterwards covered with mud sufficiently thick to prevent the heat of the summer-water penetrating to it; and if, when the sea-bottom was upraised into land, the covering was sufficiently thick to prevent the heat of the summer air and sun thawing and corrupting it.