326 APPENDIX. No. XIV. 



The presence and abundance of these minute organisms, 

 with their exquisitely sculptured silicious investments, is a 

 point of much interest in relation to the existence of animal 

 life. It has been long known that they abound in the ali- 

 mentary canal of certain radiata and bivalve mollusca, and 

 where they are abundant, which seems to be the rule, this 

 implies the possible presence of certain animal forms which 

 find abundant pabulum in the organic contents of the 

 Diatoms ; these lower are preyed upon by those of higher 

 type, and we thus have a very notable and interesting chain 

 of dependence and an illustration of the proverbial ' power of 

 the littles.' 



It is, therefore, not surprising to find that at least sixteen 

 species of bivalve mollusca were collected beyond 80° N. by 

 the naturalists of the Expedition. 



[The "botanical collections treated of in the preceding pages were 

 mainly, though not entirely, made in Grinnell Land between the latitudes 

 of 81° 40' N., and 83° 6' N. The vicinity of Discovery Bay, and as far 

 north as lat. 81° 50', was carefully botanised by Mr. Hart, and from that 

 latitude to the eighty-third parallel the collections were made by the 

 writer. Though the period for collecting phanerogamic plants was con- 

 fined to a month or six weeks in the summer of 1876, yet it is probable 

 that few flowering plants escaped observation, and that the collections 

 brought back give an accurate and adequate idea of the phanerogamic 

 flora of Grinnell Land. The number of species of lichens obtained is 

 astonishing, yet this result may fairly be considered only as a contribu- 

 tion to the lichenology of Grinnell Land, and not by any means an 

 exhaustive collection ; the same remark applies to the collections of 

 fungi, confervas, and diatomacese. — H. "YV. Feilden.] 



