ECOLOGICAL 



85 



the majority are less easygoing. The deep sea has been a sterner 

 school of life than the surface. 



Littoral. — At a very early date the shores were peopled, and 

 the fauna is very rich and representative. From the strictly Littoral 

 zone, exposed at low tide, with its acorn-shells and periwinkles, 

 limpets and cockles, to the Laminarian zone (to 15 fathoms), with 

 its sea-slugs and oysters, where the great seaweeds wave listlessly 

 amid an extremely keen battle, to the Coralline zone (15-40 fathoms). 



Fig. 21. 



One of the Sea-horses {Phyllopteryx eques),' whose tassels give it a remarkable 

 resemblance to the seaweed among which it lives. After Gunther. 



with its carnivorous buckles, what variety and abundance, what 

 crowding and struggle ! 



There are Infusorians and Foraminifera, horny, flinty, and 

 calcareous Sponges, zoophytes and sea-anemones, many "worms", 

 starfishes and sea-urchins, crabs and shrimps, acorn-shells on the 

 rocks and sandhoppers among the jetsam, a few insects about high- 

 tide mark, sea-spiders clambering on the seaweeds, abundant 

 bivalves and gasteropods, sea-squirts in their degeneracy, besides 

 fishes, a few reptiles, numerous shore birds, and an occasional 

 mammal. The shore fauna is thus very representative, rivalling in 

 its range that of the open sea, far exceeding that of the abysses. 



The conditions of life on the shore are in some ways the most 

 stimulating in the world. It is the meeting-place of air, water, and 

 land. Vicissitudes are not exceptional, but normal. Ebb and flow of 

 tides, fresh-water floods and desiccation under a hot sun, the 



