THREE CRUISES OF THE "BLAKE." 



XIV. 



THE WEST INDIAN FAUNA. 



The inhabitants of the abyssal realm as now known differ 

 far more from the surface faunae than the latter do from one 

 another, one of the most striking characteristics of deep-sea life 

 being the fact that there exists at the bottom of the ocean a 

 fauna of almost exclusively animal feeders, which, in addition 

 to preying upon one another, receive some of their food from 

 the organic matter living on or near the surface of the sea and 

 constantly falling to the bottom in a decaying condition. The 

 deep-sea fishes, the mollusks, Crustacea, and other groups, are 

 nearly all carnivorous, no algse being found growing at any 

 depth. 



Deep-sea forms are almost always killed in the process of 

 hauling, either by rough handling or else by the heat of the 

 surface water. We can scarcely hope ever to watch the habits 

 of the deep-sea dwellers, and see them in their natural atti- 

 tudes, and we must be satisfied to imagine what these are 

 by analogy with their shallow-water allies, though many species 

 of Crustacea, echinoderms, polyps, and mollusks have been kept 

 alive in a casing of ice by the naturalists of the United States 

 Fish Commission. A similar attempt had been made on the 

 " Blake " with some of the echinoderms, but they refused to be 

 deluded for more than a few minutes by ice-cold water into the 

 belief that they still lived in their normal condition. 



Very frail deep-sea animals are often rapidly transferred to 

 the surface from a region where they are subjected to a pres- 

 sure of two tons or more, and it is not surprising that, after 



