154 ATLANTIC OCEAN. [CHAP. vm. 



thiii, and are serrated with the finest teeth, directed backwards : 

 their curved extremities are flattened, and on this part five most 

 minute cups are placed which seem to act in the same manner as 

 the suckers on the arms of the cuttle-fish. As the animal lives in 

 the open sea, and probably wants a place of rest, I suppose this 

 beautiful and most anomalous structure is adapted to take hold 

 of floating marine animals. 



In deep water, far from the land, the number of living creatures 

 is extremely small : soiith of the latitude 35, I never succeeded in 

 catching anything besides some beroe, and a few species of minute 

 eutomostracous 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 Entomostraca. Yet whales 

 and seals, petrels and albatross, are exceedingly abundant through- 

 out 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 phospho- 

 rescent; and off Cape Horn I do not recollect more than once 

 having seen it so, and then it was far from being brilliant. This 



