i833-J A PHOSPHORESCENT SEA. 167 



I never succeeded in catching anything besides some boroe, 

 and a few species of minute entomostracous Crustacea. In 

 shoaler water, at the distance of a few miles from the coast, 

 very many kinds of Crustacea and some other animals are 

 numerous, but only during the night. Between latitudes 

 56° and 57° south of Cape Horn, the net was put astern 

 several times ; it never, however, brought up anything 

 besides a few of two extremely minute species of entomo- 

 straca. Yet whales and seals, petrels and albatross, are 

 exceedingly abundant throughout this part of the ocean. 

 It has always been a mystery to me on what the albatross, 

 which lives far from the shore, can subsist : I presume that, 

 like the condor, it is able to fast long ; and that one good 

 feast on the carcass of a putrid whale lasts for a long time. 

 The central and intertropical parts of the Atlantic swarm 

 with pteropoda, Crustacea, and radiata, and with their 

 devourers the flying-fish, and again with their devourers 

 the bonitos and albicores ; I presume that the numerous 

 lower pelagic animals feed on the infusoria, which are now 

 known, from the researches of Ehrenberg, to abound in the 

 open ocean ; but on what, in the clear blue water, do these 

 infusoria subsist ? 



While sailing a little south of the Plata on one very dark 

 night, the sea presented a wonderful and most beautiful 

 spectacle. There was a fresh breeze, and every part of the 

 surface, which during the day is seen as foam, now glowed 

 with a pale light. The vessel drove before her bows two 

 billows of liquid phosphorus, and in her wake she was 

 followed by a milky train. As far as the eye reached, the 

 crest of every wave was bright, and the sky above the 

 horizon, from the reflected glare of these livid flames, was 

 not so utterly obscure as over the vault of the heavens. 



As we proceed further southward the sea is seldom 

 phosphorescent ; and off Cape Horn I do not recollect 

 more than once having seen it so, and then it was far 

 from being brilliant. This circumstance probably has a 

 close connection with the scarcity of organic beings in 

 that part of the ocean. After the elaborate paper* by 

 Ehrenberg, on the phosphorescence of the sea, it is almost 

 superfluous on my part to make any observations on the 

 subject. I may however add, that the same torn and 

 irregular particles of gelatinous matter, described by 

 Ehrenberg, seem, in the southern as well as in the 



* An abstract i* given in No. IV. of the Mafoaint of Zoology and Botany. 



