FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 201 



portance in the minds of more practical and far- 

 seeing readers. Realize then, that even for our 

 human race, the universe of plankton is of vital 

 importance. The surface-loving copepods are 

 commonly and correctly known as "whale food," 

 and they are also the most important food of many 

 fishes. Only at the surface can vegetable life exist 

 and develop, changing sunlight into edible mater- 

 ials, and in plankton diatoms and other plants 

 affording satisfactory aquatic fodder to the small 

 grazing animals about them. They thus start the 

 ball of life rolling, which does not cease until it 

 includes the possibility of continued existence for 

 whales and food fishes, while, in the future, the 

 whole human race may come to depend upon this 

 larder of ocean. 



Indeed it is a remarkable fact that ship-wrecked 

 men in an open boat, if their lot is cast on waters 

 rich in plankton, need never starve to death if they 

 can manage to drag an old shirt, net fashion, 

 through the water at night. The great percentage 

 of crustaceans makes plankton a rich, nourishing 

 food, even raw. 



I can imagine no swifter way of killing anyone's 

 interest in plankton than to put him in front of 

 a pan of forty million swarming small folk. We 

 have only a sort of hypnotic or at most super- 

 ficial interest in a regiment or mob; and so I 

 gave but the merest mechanical attention to the 

 thirteen thousand odd lanthina snails in my count- 

 ing tray. But when I lay flat on my pulpit plat- 

 form and began scooping up, one by one, the 



