Toilers in the sea / [M.C. Cooke].

  • Cooke, M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt), 1825-1914.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Toilers in the sea / [M.C. Cooke]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    as a dwelling-place, at the same time contains an enormous store of nourishment for them. The same thing must take place in all seas. In the shallower regions which immediately surround continents and islands, great masses of Algae grow wherever there are rocks and stones. In the warmer seas there is an enormous floating Sargasso-life. Only a small portion of these plants is directly eaten by animals, or thrown upon the shore. Most of them die where they have lived, or, after they have been carried away by currents and winds, lose the gases which make them lighter than sea-water, sink down, and become finally decomposed into a soft mass. With the sinking organic materials are, of course, inter- mixed the remains of Testacea, and the fine in- organic soil constituents of the higher regions, which the currents of flood and ebb and the waves are unceasingly triturating. This muddy mixture must move down towards the deeps upon the sloping sea bottom in the neighbourhood of the coasts, from purely mechanical causes, until the weight and mutual adhesion of the individual particles present so much resistance to the pressure of the masses following them from above that equilibrium is pro- duced.” And again, “dead plants, fragments of shells, and sand, are heaped one upon the other to a height of feet or fathoms. The alternation of flood and ebb, and the winds, keep the upper strata