CHAPTER V. 



MINUTE ANIMAL LIFE. 



Oh, what an endless work hath he in hand 

 Who'd count the sea's abundant progeny; 

 Whose fruitful seed far passeth that on land, 

 And also them that roam the azure sky, 

 So fertile be the floods in generation, 

 So vast their numbers, and so numberless their nation." 



—Spencer. 



^UE and just are the words of the British 

 poet; though the surface of the ocean is 

 less rich in animal and vegetable forms 

 than that of continents, ^ill, when its depths 

 are searched, perhaps no other portion of our 

 planet presents such fullness of organic life. 

 It has been said that our land forests do not harbor so many 

 animals as the low-wooded regions of the ocean, where the 

 sea-weeds, rooted to the shoals, or long branches detached by 

 the force of waves and currents, and swimming free, up- 

 borne by air-cells, unfold their delicate foliage. The micro- 

 scope still further increases our impression of the profusion 

 of organic life which pervades the recesses of the ocean, 

 since throughout its mass we find animal existence, and at 

 depths exceeding the height of our loftiest mountain chains. 

 Here swarm countless hosts of minute animals, which, when 

 attracted to the surface by particular conditions of weather, 

 convert every wave into a crest of light. The abundance 

 of these minute creatures, and of the animal matter supplied 

 by their rapid decomposition, is such, that the sea-water 



