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The explanation he gives seems to entail a set of conditions that everybody knows: "Now," Maury says, "if bits of cork or chaff, or any floating substance, be put into a basin, and a circular motion be given to the water, all the light substances will be found crowding together near the center of the pool, where there is the least motion. Just such a basin is the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf Stream, and the Sargasso Sea is the center of the whirl."
他說：“我們可以拿出來的說明，我以為就是從人人都知道的一種經驗所得到的結果。把軟木塞碎片或其他浮體的碎片放進一盆水中，使盆中的水作圓形的運動，我們就看見那些分散的碎片成群地聚在水面的中心，即最不受激動的部分。在現在我們留意的這個現象中，那盆是大西洋，暖流是圓形的水流，薩爾加斯海是浮體齊來團聚的中心。”
I share Maury's view, and I was able to study the phenomenon in this exclusive setting where ships rarely go. Above us, huddled among the brown weeds, there floated objects originating from all over:
我贊同莫利的意見，我又可以在這普通船只很難達到的特殊環境中，研究這種現象。在我們頭上，浮著從各處漂來的物在這些紫黑色的草葉中間堆積著的，
tree trunks ripped from the Rocky Mountains or the Andes and sent floating down the Amazon or the Mississippi, numerous pieces of wreckage, remnants of keels or undersides, bulwarks staved in and so weighed down with seashells and barnacles, they couldn't rise to the surface of the ocean.
有從安第斯基山脈拔下來、由亞馬遜河或密西西比河浮來的大樹干，門。
And the passing years will someday bear out Maury's other view that by collecting in this way over the centuries, these substances will be turned to stone by the action of the waters and will then form inexhaustible coalfields.
無數遇難船的殘骸，龍骨或艙底的剩余，破損的船板，上面堆滿蛤階和荷茗兒貝，十分沉重，不可能再浮上洋面來。
