208 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



cursion near shore we played with one for an hour, 

 bumping into it continually with our bow and being 

 splashed by the threshing fin-tips as it half turned 

 over. There were two close together, each with a 

 ten foot expanse of wings. They refused to leave 

 or to go down although we pummeled them with 

 the oars, and they were still swimming and rolling 

 about when we left. 



Merely to enumerate the species of floating, liv- 

 ing beings which we took in our surface nets would 

 fill this chapter, so all we can do is to think for a 

 moment of the most characteristic ones. If a cup- 

 ful of pond water is examined, tiny creatures will 

 be seen shooting about, and under the lens one of 

 these resolves into a crustacean thing, with two 

 enormously long horns or antennae, and a single, 

 median eye. This is aptly named Cyclops, and is 

 a member of the group of copepods. We may 

 recall that these little beasts comprised thirty 

 million of our enumerated plankton haul, and so 

 abundant are they that they usually give the charac- 

 teristic color to the hauls or even to the ocean for 

 miles around, varying from carnelian red to deep 

 madder blue. 



Oceanic crustaceans in general and copepods in 

 particular correspond in numbers and variety to 

 the insects among terrestrial creatures. Indeed 

 as regards beauty and variety I can compare cope- 

 pods only with snow crystals. Very small species 

 often contained good-sized oil globules which 

 seemed to serve the purpose of buoyancy, but 

 these were lacking in larger, bizarre forms who 



