Page:In Memoriam. Matthew Fontaine Maury.djvu/16

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that character since undertaken, and leading directly to the establishment of Telegraphic communication between the continents by Cable on the bed of the ocean. In these labors he was effectively assisted by the genius of one of our colleagues, Col. John M. Brooke, then on duty in the Naval Observatory, whose Deep-Sea Sounding Apparatus first brought up specimens, whilst it fathomed the depths of the ocean.

But to these immediately practical and beneficial results there was still something to be added. The investigations, of which they were the first fruits, presented materials for a work that should make clear to the landsman as well as to the mariner, the wonderful mechanism of the Sea, with its currents and its atmosphere; and this he did in his well-known work, "The Physical Geography of the Sea" which, translated into the languages of France, Germany, Holland, Norway, Spain, and Italy, has spread the fame of its author throughout Europe.

To enumerate the various subjects of interest and importance to his own country, which Maury suggested and successfully advocated, cannot be done in this brief notice of a life so full of action. By Humboldt he was declared to be the founder of a new and important