140 THE STORY OF LIFE IN THE SEAS. 



elongated to form delicate pointed organs like 

 the tentacles of a Polyp. Among the blind 

 Crustaceans, too, we often find enormously long 

 antennae, and even the claws and legs are so 

 long and delicate that they bring to mind the 

 appendages of a Daddy-long-legs or a Harvest 

 spider. 



Just as a blind man acquires a remarkably 

 acute sense of touch, so, it seems, in the course 

 of generations, these blind animals of the abyss 

 have acquired extremely delicate tactile organs. 



The deep-sea Fauna is also remarkable for the 

 great number of animals which are phosphores- 

 cent. As in the surface-swimming creatures the 

 phosphorescence is not confined to a few classes, 

 but probably occurs to a greater or less extent in 

 all the more important groups. The word " prob- 

 ably 7 ' must be used in the previous sentence, 

 because it is not yet scientifically proved that 

 many forms which are supposed to be phosphor- 

 escent are actually so ; but the evidence is con- 

 clusive that phosphorescence is a common and 

 widespread character of most of the deep-sea 

 Fauna. 



The Fish exhibit, perhaps more than any other 

 group, peculiar organs which are supposed, and 

 in many cases proved to be, used for the pur- 

 pose of generating light. In the Stomatidcs, a 

 family of Fish related to the Salmons, there are 

 often numerous little organs, like minute bull's- 

 eye lanterns, arranged in rows on the sides of the 

 body from the head to the tail, and in addition 

 to these in some species one or more pairs of 

 larger organs are seen on the upper lip just in 



