WAVES SALT SEAWEEDS 367 



"Exactly: the water would disappear, evaporated 

 1>\ the sun, and the salt would remain in the plate." 



"Tin-re are lots of fish in the sea, I know," said 

 Claire, "small, large, and monstrous. The sardine, 

 cod, anchovy, tunny-fish, and ever so many more 

 come to us from the sea. There are also mollusks, as 

 you call them, also animals that cover themselves 

 with a shell; then enormous crabs with claws bigger 

 than a man's fist; and a lot of other creatures that I 

 don't know. What do they all live on?" 



"First, they eat one another a good deal. The 

 weakest becomes the prey of a stronger one, which 

 in its turn finds its master and becomes food for it. 

 I Jut it is plain that if the inhabitants of the sea had 

 no other resource than devouring one another, sooner 

 <r later nourishment would fail them and they would 

 perish. 



"Therefore, in this matter of nutrition, things are 

 ordered in the sea much as they are on land. Plants 

 furnish alimentary matter. Certain species feed on 

 the plant, others devour those 

 that eat the plant; so that, di- 

 ly or indirectly, vegetation 

 really nourishes them all." 



"I midrr.-tand." 1 said Jules. 



"A sheep browses the grass, a $ 

 wolf eate thr sheep, and so it is 

 the grass that nourishes the 



wolf. Tlinv Bre, then, plants in tin- 



k 'In irreat almndaner. <hir prairies are not more 

 grassy than the bottom of tin- sea. Only, mariii" 

 plants diffVr much from land ones. Thev never 



