§• ICO, 161. GULF STREAM, CLIMATES, AND COMMERCE. 55 



such a " school of young sea-nettles as had never before been heard 

 of." The sea was covered with them for many leagues. He lik- 

 ened them, as they appeared on near inspection in the water, to 

 acorns floating on a stream ; but they were so thick as to com- 

 pletely cover the sea, giving it the appearance, in the distance, of 

 a boundless meadow in the yellow leaf. He was bound to En- 

 gland, and was five or six days in sailing through them. In 

 about sixty days afterward, on his return, he fell in with the same 

 school off the Western Islands, and here he was three or four 

 days in passing them again. He recognized them as the same, 

 for he had never before seen any like them ; and on both occa- 

 sions he frequently hauled up buckets full and examined them. 



160. Now the Western Islands is the great place of resort for 

 Food for whaiea. whalcs ; and at first there is something curious to 



us in the idea that the Gulf of Mexico is the harvest field, and the 

 Gulf Stream the gleaner which collects the fruitage planted there, 

 and conveys it thousands of miles off to the hungry whale at sea. 

 But how perfectly in unison is it with the kind and providential 

 care of that great and good Being which caters for the sparrow, 

 and feeds the young ravens when they cry ! 



161. Piazzi Smyth, the Astronomer Koyal of Edinburgh, when 

 Piazzi Smyth's de- bouud to Tcneriffe on his celebrated astronomical 

 scription. expedition of 1856, fell in with the annual harvest 

 of these creatures. They were in the forni of hollow gelatinous 

 lobes, arranged in groups of five or nine — each lobe having an 

 orange vein down the centre. Thus each animal was formed of 

 an aggregation of lobes, with an orange-colored vein, or stomach, 

 in every lobe. " Examining," says he, '' in the microscope a por- 

 tion of one of the orange veins, apparently the stomach of the 

 creature, it was found to be e:^traordinarily rich in diatomes, and 

 of the most bizarre forms, as stars, Maltese crosses, embossed cir- 

 cles, semicircles, and spirals. The whole stomach could hardly 

 have contained less than seven hundred thousand ; and when we 

 multiply them by the number of lobes, and then by the number 

 of groups, we shall have some idea of the countless millions of 

 diatomes that go to make a feast for the medusa — some of the 

 softest things in the world thus confounding and devouring the 

 hardest — the flinty-shelled diatomacoe." Each of these "sea-net- 

 tles," as the sailors call them, had in his nine stomachs not less, 



