SALPA IN RELATION TO EVOLUTION OF LIFE. 163 



of the hooks dropped into the mouths of large sea auemones, so 

 that they were brought up uninjured, and were carried more than 

 three hundred miles to the laboratory, where they lived for some 

 time in an aquarium. 



The number of remains of palaeozoic crinoids and brachiopods 

 and trilobites which are crowded into a slab of fine-grained lime- 

 stone is most astounding, and it testifies most vividly and forcibly 

 to the wealth of life on the old sea-floor. 



No description can convey an adequate conception of the bound- 

 less luxuriance of a coral island, but nothing else affords such a 

 vivid picture of the capacity of the sea-floor for supporting life. 



The marine plants are not abundant on coral islands, and the 

 animals depend either directly or indirectly upon the pelagic food- 

 supply, so that in this respect their life is like that of animals in 

 the deep sea far from land. 



The abundant life is not restricted to the growing edge of the 

 reef, and the inner lagoons are often like crowded aquaria. At 

 Nassau, my party of eight persons found so much to study in a 

 little reef in a lagoon, close to our laboratory, that for four months 

 and more we found new things every day, and our explorations 

 seldom carried us beyond this little tract of bottom. Every inch 

 of the surface was carpeted with living animals, while others were 

 darting about among the corals and gorgonias in all directions ; 

 but this was not all, for the solid coral was honeycombed every- 

 where by tubes and burrows ; and, when broken to pieces with a 

 hammer, each mass of coral gave us specimens of nearly every 

 great group in the animal kingdom. Fishes, Crustacea, annelids, 

 molluscs, echinoderms, hydroids and sponges could be picked out 

 of every fragment, and the abundance of life inside the solid rock 

 was most wonderful. 



The absence of pelagic life in the landlocked waters of coral islands 

 is as impressive and noteworthy as tlie luxuriance of life upon and 

 near the bottom. 



On my first visit to the Bahama Islands I was sadly disappointed 

 by the absence of pelagic animals where all the conditions seemed 

 to be j)eculiarly favorable. 



The deep ocean is so near that, as one cruises through the inner 

 sounds past the openings between the islets which form the outer 



