Each wrought alone, yet all together wrought,
Unconscious, not unworthy instruments,
By which a hand invisible was rearing
A new creation in the secret deep.
.....I saw the living pile ascend,
The mausoleum of its architects,
Still dying upwards as their labors closed;
Slime the material, but the slime was turned
To adamant by their petrific touch:
Frail were their frames, ephemeral their lives,
Their masonry imperishable."

The deep-sea soundings taken recently for the Atlantic telegraph have
demonstrated the existence of organic life even at the bottom of the
ocean. Numerous living Infusoria have been brought to the light of day,
from their hidden recesses, by the lead. "Deeper than ever plummet
sounded" before these latter days, there exist myriads of minute
creatures, and of Algae to furnish their food. It is an unanswered
problem, How they can resist the enormous pressure to which they must
be there subjected, amounting, not infrequently, to several tons to the
square inch. And still another point of interest for us springs
from this. It is an inquiry of practical importance to the aquarian
naturalist, How far the diminished pressure which they meet with in the
tank, on being transferred from their lower homes to the aquarium, may
influence their viability. May not some of the numerous deaths in the
marine tank be reasonably attributed to this lack of pressure?

What a difference, too, has Nature established, in the natural power to
resist pressure, between those creatures which float near the surface
and those which haunt the deeper sea! The Jelly-fish can live only near