GULF STREAM, CLIMATES, AKD COMMERCE. 57 



about sixty clays afterwards, on his return, he fell in with the same 

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

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

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

 he frequently hauled up buckets full and examined them. 



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

 Food for whales, whales ; and at first there is something curious to 



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

 Grulf 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 that caters for the sparrow, 

 and feeds the young ravens when they ciy ! 



161. Piazzi Smyth, the Astronomer Koyal of Edinbm-gh, when 

 piazzi Smyth's de- bouud to Tcueriffe on his celebrated astronomical 

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

 of these creatm-es. They were in the form of hollow gelatinous 

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

 orange vein do"\^Ti the centre. Thus each animal was formed of 

 an aggregation of lobes, with an orange-colom-ed 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 

 creatm-e, it was found to be extraordinarily rich in diatomes, and 

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

 cles, semicu'cles, and spirals. The whole stomach could hardly 

 have contained less than seven hundi'ed 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 medusae — some of the 

 softest things in the world thus confoimding and devouring the 

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

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

 according to this computation, than five or six millions of these 

 mites of flinty shells, the materials of which then' inhabitants had 

 collected from the silicious matter which the rains washed out 

 from the valleys, and which the rivers are continually rolling down 

 to the sea. 



162. The medusae have the power of sucking in the sea-water 

 brin<^fonh-ohh^^* slowly, and of ejecting it again mth more or less 

 abundantly! forcc. Thus they derive both food and the power 



of locomotion, for, in the passage of the water, they strain it and 



