lantern under water has proved to
be impracticable. It is not the light alone which is wanted, but that
sweet familiar atmosphere through which we are habituated to look. The
submarine diver learns to rely wholly on the truer sense of touch, and
guided by that he engages in tasks requiring labor and skill with the
easy assurance of a blind man in the crowded street.

The conveyance of sound through the inelastic medium of water is so
difficult that it has been called the world of silence. This is only
comparatively true. The fish has an auditory cavity, which, though
simple in itself, certifies the ordinary conviction of sound, but it
is dull and imperfect; and perhaps all marine creatures have other
means of communication. There is an instance, however, of musical
sounds produced by marine animals, which seems to show an appreciation
of harmony. In one of the lakes of Ceylon, Sir Emerson Tennent heard
soft musical sounds, like the first faint notes of the aeolian harp
or the faint vibrations of a wineglass when its rim is rubbed by a wet
finger. This curious harmony is supposed to be produced by a species
of testaceous mollusk. A similar intonation is heard at times along
the Florida coast.

Interesting as this may be, as indicating an appreciation of that
systematic order in arrangement which in music is harmony, it does not
alter the fact that to the ears of the diver, save the cascade of the
air through the life-hose, it is a sea of silence. No shout or spoken
word reaches him. Even a cannon-shot comes to him dull and muffled,
or if distant it is unheard. But a sharp, quick sound, that appears to
break the air, like ice, into sharp radii, can be heard, especially if
struck against anything on the water. The sound of driving a nail on
the ship above, for example, or a sharp tap on the diving-bell below,
is distinctly and reciprocally audible. Conversation below the surface
by ordinary methods is out of the question, but it can be sustained
by placing the metal helmets of the interlocutors together, thus
providing a medium of conveyance.

The effort to clothe with intelligence subaqueous life must have been
greatly strengthened among primitive nations by the musical sounds
to which I have referred. Those mysterious breathings were associated
with a human will, and gave forebodings from their very sweetness.
Everywhere they are associated with a passionate or pathetic mystery,
and the widely-spread area over which t