THE OPEN SEA 77 



for part of their life and at home elsewhere 

 at another period. Thus the guillemots and 

 puffins, which nest in early summer in such 

 vast numbers on some of the British bird- 

 clifls, are open-sea birds for a considerable 

 part of the year. Many shore animals, such 

 as crab and rock-lobster, star-fish and sea- 

 urchin, have free-swimming larvae in the open 

 water, often many miles from the coast. Jelly- 

 fishes are characteristically open-sea animals, 

 their stranding on flat beaches being quite 

 accidental, but it should be noticed that the 

 common and cosmopolitan jelly-fish, Aurelia 

 aurita, passes through a juvenile fixed stage, 

 attached to rock or seaweed. 



THE WHALE AS A GREAT BUNDLE OF 

 FITNESSES 



The mammals of the open sea are the 

 Cetaceans, giants like the Right Whale and 

 the Sperm Whale, and small ones like dol- 

 phins and porpoises. All of them have such 

 mastery of their medium that they must be 

 ranked among the conquerors of the open sea. 

 Let us think for a little of the whale as a 

 great bundle of fitnesses, taking especially the 



