FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 199 



As I have elsewhere explained, the floatmg 

 oceanic life is known as plankton — indicating the 

 helplessness of these wanderers, drifting about at 

 the direction of the winds and currents. Even 

 vaguely to estimate the abundance or numbers of 

 these powdery clouds of animals of the ocean is 

 to attempt a Herculean task, second only to num- 

 bering the sands of the shore or the proverbial 

 hairs of our head. One dark, moonless evening 

 I put out a silk surface net the mouth of which 

 was round, and about a metre or a yard in diam- 

 eter. At the farther end of the net a quart pre- 

 serve jar was tied to receive and hold any small 

 creatures which might be caught as the net was 

 drawn slowly along the surface of the water. 

 This was done at the speed of two knots and kept 

 up for the duration of one hour. When drawn in, 

 the net sagged heavily and we poured out an over- 

 flowing mass, of rich pink jelly into a white flat 

 tray. This I weighed carefully and then took, as 

 exactly as possible, a one-hundred-and-fiftieth por- 

 tion. I began to go over this but soon became dis- 

 couraged, and again divided it and set to work on 

 one sixth of the fraction on which I had first 

 started. After many hours of eye-straining and 

 counting under the microscope, I conservatively 

 estimated my 1/150 part of the hour's plankton 

 haul as follows: 



Feathery copepods — Candace-like 7,920 



Bright blue copepods — Pontella-like 71,400 

 Other copepods — Calanus-like, pink 139,320 



