24 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF 



The animalculee forming the food of the whale con- 

 sist of various species of actinia, cliones, sepia, medusa, 

 cancri, and helica; or, at least, some of their genera 

 are always found wherever any tribes of whales are seen 

 stationary and feeding. Captain Scoresby, however, 

 found in the dead animals, when he was enabled to open 

 their stomachs, that a few squilla, or shrimps, were the 

 only substances he discovered. In the mouth of a 

 whale he had just killed, he once found a quantity of this 

 species of the shrimp tribe. This gentleman estimates 

 that two square miles of the Greenland Ocean contains 

 23,888,000,000,000,000 of these minute creatures ; and, 

 as this number is beyond the range of human words and 

 conception, he illustrates it by observing, that 80,000 

 persons would have been employed since the creation of 

 the world in counting them. He is also of opinion, " that 

 the medusa, and other minute animals, give the peculiar 

 colour to the sea which is observed to be so prevalent 

 in the Arctic Regions ; and that, from their profusion, 

 they are at the same time the occasion of that great 

 diminution of transparency which always accompanies 

 the olive-green colour in the blue water. Where few of 

 the little medusa exist, the sea is uncommonlv trans- 

 parent. Captain Wood, when attempting the dis- 

 covery of a north-east passage, in the year 1676, 

 sounded near Nova Zembla in eighty fathoms water, 

 where the bottom was not only to be seen, but even 

 shells lying on the ground were clearly visible."* 



Button is even of opinion that light is capable of 

 penetrating six hundred feet, or 100 fathoms, into the 

 waters of the ocean. 



* Clearness of the Sea at the Arctic Ocean. — In allusion to the 

 colour of the Northern Sea, (lie following: pleasing description of its ap- 



