One immense fact that he exhibits, but only secondarily, and as it were in a mere side view, is that the infinite life of the ocean, the myriads upon myriads of beings which it at every moment makes and destroys, absorb its various salts to form their flesh, their shells, &c., &c. They thus, by depriving the water of its salt, render it lighter, and, by so much, aid in producing currents. In the potent laboratories of animal organization, as those of the Indian ocean and the Coraline, that force, elsewhere less remarkable, appears as what it really is—immense.
"Each of these imperceptibles," says Maury, "changes the equilibrium of the ocean, they harmonize and compensate it." But is this saying enough? Should they not be the grand moving powers which have created the currents of the sea, put the immense machine into motion?
Who knows whether this vital circulus of the marine animality is not the starting point of all physical circulus? If animalized sea does not give the eternal impulse to the animalizable sea—not organized, indeed, as yet, but aspiring to be so, and already fermenting with approaching life?
TEMPESTS.
There are occasional commotions of the sea, which Maury, in his forcible way, calls "the Sea's spasms." He especially alludes to the sudden movements which appear to proceed from below, and which in the Asiatic seas are often equivalent to a genuine tempest. These sudden outbursts are attributed to various causes, as: 1st, the violent collision of two tides or currents; 2nd, the sudden superabundance of rain water on the sea's surface; 3rd, the breaking up and sudden melting of the icebergs, &c. To these causes, some authors add the hypothesis of electric movements and volcanic submarine heavings.
It seems probable, however, that the depths of the great mass of the waters are quite peaceable; were it otherwise, the sea would be unfitted for her office of nursing-mother to her myriads upon myriads of living beings. If these occasional commotions, so violent at the surface, were equally so at the bottom of the sea, what could preserve the nurslings of that great nursery where a whole world of delicate creatures more fragile even than those of our earth, are cradled in and nourished by its waters? The myriad-life of the Ocean assures us that these violent commotions cannot be common in its depths.