THREE CRUISES OF THE "BLAKE." 
XIV. 
THE WEST INDIAN FAUNA. 
Tux inhabitants of the abyssal realm as now known differ 
far more from the surface faune than the latter do from one 
another, one of the most striking characteristics of deep-sea life 
being the fact that there exists at the bottom of the ocean a 
fauna of almost exclusively animal feeders, which, in addition 
to preying upon one another, receive some of their food from 
the organic matter living on or near the surface of the sea and 
constantly falling to the bottom in a decaying condition. The 
deep-sea fishes, the mollusks, crustacea, and other groups, are 
nearly all carnivorous, no alga being found growing at any 
depth. 
Deep-sea forms are almost always killed im the process of 
hauling, either by rough handling or else by the heat of the 
surface water. We can scarcely hope ever to watch the habits 
of the deep-sea dwellers, and see them in their natural atti- 
tudes, and we must be satisfied to imagine what these are 
by analogy with their shallow-water allies, though many species 
of crustacea, echinoderms, polyps, and mollusks have been kept 
alive in a casing of ice by the naturalists of the United States 
Fish Commission. A similar attempt had been made on the 
* Blake" with some of the echinoderms, but they refused to be 
deluded for more than a few minutes by ice-cold water into the 
belief that they still lived in their normal condition. 
Very frail deep-sea animals are often rapidly transferred to 
the surface from a region where they are subjected to a pres- 
sure of two tons or more, and it is not surprising that, after 
