animals there, according to him, is several hundred feet in thickness.  The celebrated diver Pescecola, whom the emperor Frederick II. employed to descend the strait of Messina, saw there with horror, enormous polypi attached to the rocks, the arms of which, being several yards long, were more than sufficient to strangle a man.  In a great many places, the madrepores form a kind of petrified forest fixed at the bottom of the sea, and frequently, too, this bottom plainly presents different layers of rock and earth.

The granite rises up in sharp-pointed masses.  Near Marseilles, marble is dug up from a submarine quarry.  There are also bituminous springs, and even springs of fresh water, that spout up from the depths of the ocean; and in the Gulf of Spezia, a great spout or fountain of fresh water is seen to rise like a liquid hill.  Similar springs furnish the inhabitants of the town of Aradus with their ordinary beverage.

On the southern coast of Cuba, to the southwest of the port of Batabano, in the bay of Xagua, at two or three miles from the land, springs of fresh water gush up with such force in the midst of the salt, that small boats cannot approach them with safety; the deeper you draw the water, the fresher you find it.  It has been observed, that in the neighbourhood of steep coasts, the bottom of the sea also sinks down suddenly to a considerable depth; whilst near a low coast, and one of gentle declivity, it is only gradually that the sea deepens.  There are some places in the sea where no bottom has yet been found.  But we must not conclude that the sea is really bottomless; an idea, which, if not absurd, is, at least, by no means conformable to the analogies of natural science.  The mountains of continents seem to correspond with what are called the abysses of the sea; but now, the highest mountains do not rise to 20,000 feet.  It is true that they have wasted down and lessened by the action of the elements; it may, therefore, be reasonably concluded, that the sea is not beyond 30,000 feet in depth; but it is impossible to find the bottom even at one-third of this depth, with our little instruments.  The greatest depth that has been tried to be measured, is that found in the northern ocean by Lord Mulgrave; he heaved a very heavy sounding lead, and gave out with it cable rope to the length of 4,680 feet, without finding bottom.—­Blake’s Encyclopedia.

* * * * *

NOTES OF A READER.

* * * * *

CHARACTER OF CROMWELL.

(From the Buccaneer.—­By Mrs. S.C.  Hall.)