LIFE IN THE GREAT DEPTHS 103^ 



ties over which they are dragged, are infinitesi- 

 mal as compared to the whole vast bed of the 

 sea, and the very fact that they do catch such 

 numbers of creatures proves how thickly pop- 

 ulated the depths of the ocean must be and 

 how the bed of the sea must fairly swarm with 

 animal life. 



Moreover, a great many of the more active 

 creatures are able to escape the slowly-mov- 

 ing dredge or trawl, while still others are far 

 too large and bulky either to be enmeshed in 

 a trawl or captured in a dredge. It is there- 

 fore highly probable that the animals we ob- 

 tain by these methods are no more representa- 

 tive of all the denizens of the deep than land 

 animals captured in a similar way would be 

 typical of all the living creatures which 

 inhabit the earth. 



^ The great bulk of animals obtained from the 

 deep sea are small, sluggish and belong to the 

 lowest forms of animal life. Among them 

 are starfishes, sea urchins, sponges, corals, gor- 

 gonias, shells and molluscs, crustaceans, 

 worms, hydroids, bryozoans, sea-anemones and 

 similar creatures, but many of them so unlike 



