you might hide from all human eyes the loftiest snow‐clad peak of the Himalayas, yet no inconsiderable depth if you reflect that the peak of Teneriffe, were it here “cast into the sea,” would sink out of sight, island, mountain, and all; and even the coloured crest of Mont Blanc would rise but a few hundred feet above the waves. The single exception to this uniform depth occurs about 200 miles off the Irish coast, where within an area of about a dozen miles the depth sinks from 550 to 1,750 fathoms. In 14° 48’ W., says Dayman, we have 550 fathoms rock, and in 150° 6’ W. we have 1,750 fathoms ooze. In little more than ten miles of distance a change of depth takes place amounting to fully 7,200 feet. It was supposed that this tremendous declivity would be the chief point of danger in laying down the cable; and to remove, if possible, the anxiety which existed, Lieutenant Dayman made a further survey. The result showed that the dip was not a sudden one; the precipitous bank or submarine cliff turned out to be a gradual slope of nearly sixty miles. Over this long slope, said a writer in the _Times_, the difference between its greatest height and greatest depth is only 8,760 feet, so that the average incline is, in round numbers, about 145 feet per mile. A good gradient on a railway is now generally considered to be 1 in 100 feet, or about 53 feet in a mile; so that the incline on this supposed bank is only about three times that of an ordinary railway. It was found upon these surveys that the ocean bed consisted of a soft ooze, as soft as the moss which clings to old damp stone on the river’s brink. And of what does this ooze consist? The microscope revealed the astonishing fact that it is made up of myriads of shells, too minute to be discovered by the naked eye, yet each perfect in itself, unbroken and uninjured. These organisms live near the surface of the water, but in death sink down to the bottom, and there find a calm and peaceful resting‐place. Well has it been said that a mighty work of life and death has for ages been going on in the tranquil bosom of ocean. Myriads upon myriads, ever since the morning of creation, have been falling—falling like snow‐flakes, till their remains cover with a thick stratum of beautiful organisms the ocean bed. “The bearing of this discovery,” says Dr. Field, “on the problem of a submarine telegraph was obvious. For it, too, was to lie on the ocean bed, beside and among those relics that had so long been drifting down upon the watery plain. And if these tiny shells slept there unharmed, surely an iron cord might rest there in safety. There were no swift currents down there; no rushing waves agitated that sunless sea. There the waters moved not, and there might rest the great nerve that was to pass from continent to continent. And so far as injury from the surrounding elements was concerned, there it might remain, whispering the thoughts of successive generations of men, till the