when first discovered, this fact constituting the test of the class to which an island belongs; whence he argued that none of them had ever been connected with continents, but all had originated in mid-ocean. These considerations alone render it almost certain that the areas now occupied by the great oceans have never, during known geological time, been occupied by continents, since it is in the highest degree improbable that every fragment of those continents should have completely disappeared, and have been replaced by volcanic islands rising out of profound oceanic abysses; but recent research into the depth of the oceans and the nature of the deposits now forming on their floors, adds greatly to the evidence in this direction, and renders it almost a certainty that they represent very ancient if not primaeval features of the earth's surface. A very brief outline of the nature of this evidence will be now given.
The researches of the Challenger expedition into the nature of the sea-bottom show, that the whole of the land debris brought down by rivers to the ocean (with the exception of pumice and other floating matter), is deposited comparatively near to the shores, and that the fineness of the material is an indication of the distance to which it has been carried. Everything in the nature of gravel and sand is laid down within a very few miles of land, only the finer muddy sediments being carried out for 20 or 50 miles, and the very finest of all, under the most favourable conditions, rarely extending beyond 150, or at the utmost, 300 miles from land into the deep ocean.[1] Beyond these distances, and covering the entire ocean floor, are various oozes formed wholly from the debris of marine organisms; while intermingled with these are found various volcanic products which have been either carried through the air or floated on the surface, and a small but perfectly recognisable quantity of meteoric matter. Ice-borne rocks are also found abundantly scattered over the ocean bottom within a definite distance of the arctic and antarctic circles, clearly marking out the limit of floating icebergs in recent geological times.
- ↑ Even the extremely fine Mississippi mud is nowhere found beyond a hundred miles from the mouths of the river in the Gulf of Mexico (A. Agassiz, Three Cruises of the Blake, vol. i. p. 128).
