CHAPTER XXVI 

 ciu sta(i:a 



The tislie.s in a school of mackerel are as miinerous as the birds in a flight 

 of wild pigeons. Goode, in his " History of Aquatic Animals," tells of onv 

 school of mackerel which was estimated to contain a million barrels, and 

 of another which was a windrow of fish half a nuh' wide and at least twenty 

 miles long ; but while the pigeons are plant eaters, the mackerel arc rapa- 

 cious luuiters. pursuing and devouring the herrings, as well a,s pterojujds and 

 pelagic Crustacea. 



Herring swarm like locusts, and a bank <»t' herring is almost a s(jlid wall. 

 In 187U three Imndred thousand river herring were landed in a single haul 

 of the seine in Albemarle Sound ; but the herring are also carnivorous, each 

 one consuming myriads of copepods every day. In spite of this destruction 

 and the ravages of armies of medusa; and siphonophores and pteropods. the 

 fertility of the copepods is so great that they are abunilant in all parts of 

 the ocean, and they are met with in luimbers which exceed our powers of 

 comprehension. 



On one occasion the CUalloujer steamed for two days through a clensf 

 cloud formed of a single species, and they are found in all latitudes from 

 the Arctic regions to the equator, in masses which discolor the water for 

 miles. "We know, too, that they are not restricted to the surface, and thai 

 banks of copepods are sometimes a mile thick. AVhen we reflect that thou- 

 sands would find ample room and food in a pint of water, we can form some 

 faint conception of their universal abundance. 



Modern microscopic research has sIkjwu that these simple jilanls [the alga- 

 in the water], and the globigeriuic and radiolarians which feed \ipon them, 

 are so abundant and prolific that they meet all the deman<ls made upon 

 them and supply the food of all the animals of the ocean. 



This is the fundamental conception of marine biology, iiie basis of all 

 the life in the modern ocean is to be sought in the microorganisms of the 

 surface. — W. K. Bkooks, " Salpa," pp. ll<;-147 



All the ingeni(»us men, and all the scientific men. and all the fanciful 

 men, in the world, with all the old German bogy painters into the bargain, 

 could never invent . . . anything so curious, and so ridiculous, as a loKster. 

 — KiNGSLEY. "Water Babies"" 



