SARGASSO WEEDS AND WAVES 23 



working injury to my eyesight. Yet even now I 

 did not quite believe what I saw, until I dipped in 

 my hand and lifted out a twelve-inch piece of flex- 

 ible water. There was absolutely no structure to 

 be seen except the gleaming eyes, and yet here was 

 a living fish. When dead and preserved, the body, 

 shaped like a long thin willow leaf, became trans- 

 lucent and then it was possible to make out the 

 hundred-odd delicate segments and the all but in- 

 visible gills and stomach. When the head was 

 placed under the microscope there leaped into view 

 a regular old-fashioned dragon, with enormously 

 long, sabre teeth, which, were the animal twelve 

 feet instead of twelve inches in length, would make 

 it infinitely more dangerous than the largest ana- 

 conda. In the Sargasso Sea we took hundreds of 

 specimens of many species, only a very few of 

 which can be accurately identified, for the reason 

 that we lack the connecting stages between these 

 indefinite water wafers of organisms, and the more 

 palpable adult fish. 



The history of two forms of Leptocephalus has 

 only very recently been worked out, and is another 

 of the inexplicable complexities of nature, which to 

 our practical, human minds seems an absolute 

 waste of energy. To Dr. Jobs. Schmidt belongs 

 much of the credit for the patient unravelling of 

 this astounding problem. As Leptocephalus is 

 strange as any dragon in a fairy tale, so its life 

 history equals the unreality of any fairy tale itself. 



Briefly, these watery beings which, at night, we 

 captured in dozens in our surface nets, are hatched 



