MAY. 99 



tide. But it is only found in such numbers for a limited 

 period of the year. It is probably the same animal in 

 another phase of its existence which appears in such 

 numbers as to redden the waters when alive and to pollute 

 the neighbourhood when dead, which is commonly known 

 as "Whale Feed." But this, too, disappears for whole 

 months. One might observe parenthetically that popular 

 names are often utterly misleading ; most things in the 

 sea that are big enough feed on this crustacean except 

 whales. Up the coast in the summer months come 

 countless shoals of pilchards and allied fishes of the herring 

 family. How enormously profuse is life in the sea ! These 

 shoals are often miles long, and no figures can convey any 

 impression of the numbers of individuals composing them. 

 Whence do they come, and where do they go ? Is it after 

 the disengagement of the antarctic ice that the cold water 

 of the Southern Ocean, setting up the East Coast, drives 

 them onward ? These are questions to which the answers 

 have yet to be found. One can see the lines and trend of 

 the shoals by the movement of the water, by the hordes of 

 porpoises and fishes of prey which accompany them, and 

 by the ever-moving army of birds which hover over them. 

 There is thus continual movement in the ocean, and it is 

 perhaps only because we know so little about these things 

 that we are apt to think that the life is stationary. 



But there is also a vast body of comparatively still life in 

 the sea, or rather one may put it this way, that certain 

 forms are always to be found in certain localities, so that 

 it would be possible to write a natural history of such an 

 area, say, as Otago Harbour, and to affirm with perfect 

 certainty that such and such species are to be found there 

 all the year round. But even of such stationary forms it 

 must be remembered that what has been affirmed of plants 

 is equally true of them. There must be a period in the 

 life of every organism when it is capable of being distri- 

 buted. Flowering plants exhibit this in their seeds, ferns 

 and allied plants in their spores. A barnacle fastened 

 apparently all its life to a rock, and a coral zoophyte 

 forming part of a reef, appear about as fixed in their 



