Neptune's ravished secrets vindicate the Neptunists,
while Pluto is relegated to the abode assigned him by classic myths,
where he and his comrade, Vulcan, keep their furnaces alight and
project their slag and smoke through many a roaring chimney.
Upon (as beneath) the deep, science is erecting for itself new homes.
It tracks the wandering wind, and moves at ease, calmly as a surveyor
with chain and compass, through the eddies of the cyclone. It maps for
the sailor the currents, aerial and subaqueous, of each spot on the
unmarked main, and sends him warning far ahead of the tempest. It
divides with the thermometer the mass of brine into horizontal zones,
and assigns to each its special population.
A hundred years ago, only the surface of the land was studied, and but
a small part of that. All beneath its surface was a mystery, and the
lore of the sea was untouched. Now, knowledge has penetrated to the
central fire, and of the sea it can be no longer said that man's
"control stops with its shores." The pathway of his messenger from
continent to continent he has laid deep in its chalky ooze, while over
it silt silently, flake by flake, as they have been falling since aeons
before his creation, the induviae of the earliest creatures.
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