OCEAN LIFE. 



CHAPTER X. 

 THE OCEAN AND ITS LIVING WONDERS. 



Perfection in Nature's Smallest Works A Word on Scientific Classification Protozoa Blind Life Rhizopoda Foraminifera 

 A Robbery Traced by Science Microscopic Workers Paris Chalk Infusoria- -The "Sixth Sense of Man "Fathers 

 of Nations Milne-Edwards' Submarine Explorations The Salt-water Aquarium The Compensating Balance Re- 

 quiredBrighton and Sydenham Practical Uses of the Aquarium Medusae : their Beauty A Poet's Description 

 Their General Characteristics Battalions of "Jelly-fish" Polyps A Floating Colony A Marvellous Organism The 

 Graceful Agalma Swimming Apparatus Natural Fishing Lines The "Portuguese Man-of- War "Stinging Powers 

 of the Physalia An Enemy to the Cuttle-fish. 



PLINY says that " Nature is nowhere more perfect than in her smaller works/' How gradually, 

 yet beautifully, do the lower forms of life ascend to the higher ! Here we may well remember 

 the following : Scientific naturalists, men of logical minds arranging the facts of Nature with 

 methodical and almost mathematical precision, have distributed the forms of animal life 

 into divisions, classes, orders, families, genera, and species. These divisions, however con- 

 venient, are, it must be noted, merely of human invention, subject to alteration as know- 

 ledge increases subject even to positive mistake. Linna?us tells us that Natura non facit 

 saitus Nature does not jump or leap from one stage to another, but passes almost insensibly, 

 life merging into other life. 



A word commonly employed in connection with the lower forms of marine life also 

 requires some passing notice. The term zoophyte, derived from two Greek words signifying 

 respectively animal and plant, would seem appropriate enough in describing generally many 

 of the organisms found in the great deep. But the term as now used signifies an animal, 

 and nothing but one, however plant-like it may appear. 



The simplest forms of marine animal life are found in the extensive group known as the 

 Protozoa. Varied as they are, they may be generally described as devoid of articulate 

 skeleton, or nervous system; they are animals, a large part of them microscopic, with a 

 vegetative existence. " In their obscure and blind life/' says Figuier, " have they conscious- 

 ness or instinct? Do they know what takes place at the three-thousandth part of an inch 

 from their microscopic bodies ? To the Creator alone does the knowledge of this mystery 

 belong." 



The limits of this work preclude the possibility of details. To the division Protozoa 

 belong the sponges, already described, the Rhizopods (Rhizopoda}, root-footed animals, and 

 the Infusoria, animalcules so small that a drop of water may contain millions. 



The Rhizopods are found both in fresh and salt water, but the marine forms are by far 

 the more numerous. They are simply minute lumps of diaphanous jelly, the quantity of 

 matter in them being so infinitesimal, and their transparency so great, that the eye, assisted 

 by the powers of the microscope, can only take cognisance of them by the most careful 

 arrangement of light. But for all that, they are known to have feet or feelers, to have 

 digestive apparatus some of them being, for their size, quite voracious feeders which may 

 be seen stuffed with microscopic alga:, or sea-weeds. It is believed that they are multiplied 

 by parting with portions of their bodies, which become separate beings. 



The Beticnlosa, or Foraminifera, form an order of this group. They are small calcareous 



