LIFE AT THE SURFACE OF THE SEA. 189 
processes. Some light is thrown on the process by recent 
investigations of Radziszewski, who finds that many fats, 
hydrocarbons, and alcohols exhibit phosphorescence when 
combining with oxygen in an alkaline medium. It seems 
very probable that the luminosity of living substances may 
depend on similar processes. Fats and oils are widely 
spread, and light occurs only in the presence of oxidation 
(see Verworn, General Physiology). “Here,” says Pfliiger, 
“in the wonderful spectacle of animal phosphorescence, 
nature has given us an example that shows us where the 
taper burns that we call life. It is certainly no rare 
exception, but only the special expression of the general law 
that all cells are burning continually, although with our 
corporeal eyes we cannot see the light.” 
THE VARIETY OF LIFE. 
While the sea is thus rich to prodigality in the abun- 
dance in which certain species of floating and swimming 
things occur, it is rich, very rich, also, especially near the 
shores, in variety of life. Most of the truly pelagic species 
tend to occur in great schools or shoals, and this is true 
both of the stronger living things which are able to make 
their way against the ocean currents, and to which the name 
of Necton has been applied, and to the weaker floating 
things which are carried passively by tide and current, and 
which I have already spoken of as Plankton. 
Amongst the swimming things we must give the first 
place to the whales, which include the very largest of living 
animals, The whales are divided by naturalists into two 
great groups: the toothed whales, such as the porpoise and the 
grampus, which subsist largely on fish; and the whalebone 
whales, which, in spite of their enormous bulk, some of them 
measuring 80 to 100 feet in length, live upon the small sur- 
face animals which are caught in myriads as the water 
filters through the plates of whalebone which fringe the 
gigantic mouth like a sieve. “The Greenland whale,” says 
Darwin, ‘‘is one of the most wonderful animals in the 
world, and the baleen, or whalebone, one of its greatest 
peculiarities. The baleen consists of a row, on each side of 
VOL. I. 5 
