CHAPTER VIII. 



ANIMAL LIFE IN TEMPERATE SEAS. 



EARLY two-thirds of the entire surface of the 

 globe lies under water, and probably a similar 

 proportion of this world of waters is included 

 within the Temperate Zones. This vast region 

 is literally teeming with life, not only along the shores, to 

 which it was formerly supposed to be mostly confined, but 

 over its entire area, and almost literally from top to bot- 

 tom ; no account, therefore, of the animals of Temperate 

 Regions would be complete which did not refer to some of 

 the more interesting forms of marine life, especially as 

 during the past few years more has been discovered regard- 

 ing the ocean and its inhabitants than in all past ages put 

 together. The "dark, unfathomed caves of ocean," on 

 which poets formerly delighted to descant, can hardly be 

 said any longer to exist, now that the dredge has explored 

 their inmost recesses, and brought up in its meshes a world 

 of living wonders for the study of the naturalist. The 

 laying of submarine telegraph cables first drew the atten- 

 tion of scientific men to the nature of the sea bottom ; and 

 one expedition after another has gone from this and other 

 countries, sounding and dredging in every sea, until now 



