The bearing of this discovery on the problem of a submarine telegraph was obvious. For it too was to lie on the ocean-bed, beside and among these relics that had so long been drifting down upon the watery plain. And if these tiny shells slept there unharmed, surely an iron chord 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 sea should give up its dead. FOOTNOTES: [A] "The ocean bed of the North Atlantic is a curious study; in some parts furrowed by currents, in others presenting banks, the accumulations perhaps of the débris of these ocean rivers during countless ages. To the west, the Gulf Stream pours along in a bed from one mile to a mile and a half in depth. To the east of this, and south of the Great Banks, is a basin, eight or ten degrees square, where the bottom attains a greater depression than perhaps the highest peaks of the Andes or Himalayas--six miles of line have failed to reach the bottom! Taking a profile of the Atlantic basin in our own latitude, we find a far greater depression than any mountain elevation on our own continent. Four or five Alleghanies would have to be piled on each other, and on them added Fremont's Peak, before their point would show itself above the surface. Between the Azores and the mouth of the Tagus this decreases to about three miles." [B] The results obtained are thus summed up in the London Times: