WHEN NIGHT COMES TO WATER 



mistiness to translucence, finally to foggy opac- 

 ity. 



From now on, each evening and each night, 

 there evolved a sequence of life about the light, 

 impressive and dramatic to the highest degree, 

 yet only dimly understandable by my dense mind 

 and tremendous ignorance. If an observer could 

 explain all that happened in the first hour about 

 a searchlight such as this, he would possess the 

 key to the populating of islands and continents, 

 to the acute life and death struggles resulting, at 

 one time, in an astonishing abundance of an 

 apparently weak creature, and again in the sud- 

 den wiping out of some strong and sturdy 

 form. 



As in a hay mfusion, there was definite sequence 

 and irrevocable shift and change. After days and 

 weeks of peering with my coarse human sight and 

 insight I began to detect a hint of the wheels 

 within wheels. Most of the forms first to appear — 

 copepods and other minute Crustacea — were at- 

 tracted by the sheer impelling force of the light. 

 They were like the lovers of open fires, and of 

 electric signs, and of "Things that gleam and 

 draw." But when the water became milky with 

 these, then the secondary line of visitors appeared. 

 They were camp-followers like the vultures and 

 eagles which wing close upon the heels of flocks 

 and herds. To them the charm of the light was 

 less than the urge for food. 



While every one of the great phyla of animal 



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