THE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE. 99 



surface, convert every wave into a crest of light, and the 

 wide ocean into a sea of fire. It is well known that the 

 abundance of thetee minute beings, and of the animal mat- 

 ter supplied by their rapid decomposition, is such, that 

 the sea water itself becomes a nutritious fluid to many 

 of the largest dwellers in the ocean. Still, they all have 

 their own homes, even their own means of locomotion. 

 They are not bound to certain regions of that great country 

 below the ocean's waters. They travel far and fast ; cur- 

 rents, unknown to man, carry them, in vast masses, from 

 the Pole to the Equator, and often from Pole to Pole, 

 so that the whale must travel, with locomotive speed, to 

 follow the medusas of the Arctic to the seas of the An- 

 tilles, if he will not dispense with his daily food. How 

 strange a chase! The giant of the seas racing in fu- 

 rious haste after hardly visible, faintly colored balls of 

 jelly ! 



But, for other purposes, also, there is incessant travel 

 going on in the ocean's hidden realm. Water is the true 

 and proper element of motion, Hence, we find here the 

 most rapid journeys, the most constant changes from 

 zone to zone. No class of animals travel so much and 

 so regularly as fish, and nowhere, in the vast household 

 of nature, do we see so clearly the close relation between 

 the wants of man, and the provision made for them by a 

 bountiful Providence. The first herrings that appeared in 

 the waters of Holland, used to be paid for by their weight 

 in gold, and a Japanese nobleman spent more than a 

 thousand ducats for a brace of common fish, when it pleased 

 his Japanese majesty to order a fish dinner at his house 



