The ocean world : being a descriptive history of the sea and its living inhabitants / Chiefly translated from "La vie et les moeurs des animaux".

  • Figuier, Louis, 1819-1894.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The ocean world : being a descriptive history of the sea and its living inhabitants / Chiefly translated from "La vie et les moeurs des animaux". Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/690 (page 5)
    THE SEA. The Pacific, or Great Ocean, stretches from north to south, from the Arctic to the Antarctic Circle, being bounded on one side by Asia, the island of Sunda, and Australia; on the other by the west coast of America. This ocean contrasts in a striking manner with the Atlantic: the one has its greatest length from north to south, the other from east to west; the currents of the Pacific are broad and slow, those of the other narrow and rapid; the waves of this are low, those of the other very high. If we represent the volume of water which falls into the Pacific by one, that received by the Atlantic will be represented by the figure 5. The Pacific is the calmest of seas; the Atlantic Ocean is the most stormy ocean. The Antarctic Ocean extends from the Antarctic Polar Circle to the South Pole. It is remarkable that one half of the globe should be entirely covered with water, whilst the other contains less of water than dry land. Moreover, the distribution of land and water, if, in considerin': the germ of the oceanic basins, we compare the hemispheres separated by the Equator and the northern and southern halves of the globe, is found to be very unequal. Oceans communicate with continents and islands by coasts, which are said to be scarped when a rocky shore makes a steep and sudden descent to the shore, as in Brittany, Norway, and the west coast of the British islands. In this kind of coast certain rocky indentations encircle it, sometimes above, sometimes under water, forming a labyiintk of islands, as at the Land’s End, Cornwall, where the Scilly Islands form a compact group of from one to two hundred rocky islets, rising out of a deep sea, or, in the case of the Channel, on the oppo- site coast of France, where the coast makes a sudden descent, forming steep clifls and leaving an open sea. The coast is said to be flat when it consists of soft argillaceous soil descending to the shore with a gentle slope. Of this description of coast there are two, namely, sandy beaches, and hillocks or dunes. What is the average depth of the sea ? It is difficult to give an exact answer to this question, because of the great difficulty met with in taking soundings, caused chiefly by the deviations of submarine currents. No reliable soundings have yet been made in water over five miles in depth.