ANIMAL LIFE IN THE SEA. 207 



some have got little heads and small fins. Of these 

 last it is said that each little creature has no fewer 

 than three hundred and sixty thousand minute 

 suckers on its head with which it seizes its prey. 

 When we think of the exceeding sinallness of the 

 creatures thus preyed upon, and consider the fact 

 that each little thing must obtain food by making 

 war upon some creatures still smaller than itself, we 

 are led almost in spite of ourselves into that mysteri- 

 ously metaphysical question infinitesimal divisi- 

 bility ; which may be translated thus the endless 

 division and subdivision of atoms. This subject has 

 puzzled the heads of the profoundest philosophers 

 of all ages ; we will not, therefore, puzzle our readers 

 with it any further. 



Scoresby tells us that the colour of the Greenland 

 Sea varies from ultramarine blue to olive-green, from 

 the purest transparency to striking opacity; and that 

 these colours are permanent, and do not depend on 

 the state of the weather, but on the quality of the 

 water. He observed that whales were found in 

 much greater numbers in the green than in the blue 

 water ; and he found, on examining the former with 

 the microscope, that its opacity and its colour were 

 due to countless multitudes of those animalcules on 

 which the whale feeds. 



We need scarcely remark that it is utterly beyond 

 the power of man to form anything approaching to 

 a correct conception of the amount of life that is thus 

 shown to exist in the ocean. Although it has pleased 



