52 FOUNDERS OF OCEANOGRAPHY 



development " of deep water or Antarctic Echinoderms, 

 where the young were found in curiously devised marsupial 

 cavities, and had evidently never passed through a free larval 

 stage. 



I shall quote here a couple of passages from The Atlantic, 

 to give some idea of the varied interest of the book and of 

 Sir Wyville's descriptive power. 



In writing of the masses of weed in the Sargasso Sea, he 

 says {Atlantic, Vol. II, p. 10) : " The floating islands have 

 inhabitants peculiar to them, and I know of no more perfect 

 example of protective resemblance than that which is shown 

 in the gulf-weed fauna. Animals drifting about on the 

 surface of the sea with such scanty cover as the single broken 

 layer of the sea-weed, must be exposed to exceptional danger 

 from the sharp-eyed sea-birds hovering above them, and from 

 the hungry fishes searching for prey beneath ; but one and all 

 of these creatures imitate in such an extraordinary way, both 

 in form and colouring, their floating habitat, and conse- 

 quently one another, that we can well imagine their deceiving 

 both the birds and the fishes. ... A little short-tailed crab 

 {Nautilografsus minutus) swarms on the weed and on every 

 floating object, and it is odd to see how the little creature 

 usually corresponds in colour with whatever it may happen 

 to inhabit. These gulf-weed animals, fishes, mollusca, and 

 crabs, do not simply imitate the colours of the gulf -weed ; 

 to do so would to be to produce suspicious patches of 

 continuous olive; they are all blotched over with bright 

 opaque white, the blotches generally rounded, sometimes 

 irregular, but at a little distance absolutely undistinguish- 

 able from the patches of Membranipora on the weed." 



On one occasion he describes (p, 147) the loss of a great 

 catch, when trawling at a depth of 2,350 fathoms in the South 

 Atlantic. " The trawl was lowered, and on heaving in it 

 came up apparently with a heavy weight, the accumulators 

 being stretched to the utmost. It was a long and weary 

 wind-in on account of the continued strain ; at length it 



