17 AUGUST 1934, Page 3

Half a Mile Under the Sea The diving record achieved

by Dr. William Beebe and Mr. Otis Barton near Bermuda serves to remind us that there are new worlds for the explorer to conquer below the sea, just as Professor Piccard's experiments in the stratosphere revealed new fields of inquiry in the upper air. There are few remote spaces on the surface of the glebe which have not been visited by man, but there remain endless opportunities for the explorer above and below the surface, the rarity of the air challenging his efforts in the one case, the density of water subject to immense pressure in the other. The triumphs of the Italian crew of the Artiglio ' in recovering sunken treasure in the Bay of Biscay have demonstrated the practical use of deep-sea diving. But Dr. Beebe, in descending 3.000 feet in his steel bathysphere, has far surpassed all previous records, and has been able to take observations of strange submarine monsters wholly unknown to the naturalist. He has recorded the various colours of the water, from blue to black, at different depths when the sunlight above was presumably bright, just as Russian experimenters in the stratosphere have noted the various colours of the sky at different heights.