THREE CRUISES OF THE “ BLAKE.” 
204 
whole floor of the oceanic basins, in which the lower forms only 
needed to roll round to find all the food they could absorb. The 
naturalists of the “Challenger,” who introduced Bathybius to 
the scientific world, were the first also gracefully to recant before 
the overwhelming proof of its non-existence which they them- 
selves had collected.’ But it still figures in some quarters as a 
prominent organism, which the Haeckelian theory of the views 
of creation demand. The younger Sars and Alphonse Milne- 
Edwards have also found this sheet of organic matter, the nature 
of which is certainly not Bathybius in the sense in which it is 
understood by Haeckel. 
A number of the marine animals ultimately depend for their 
food upon the pelagic fauna. The fishes feed upon the hosts of 
free-swimming crustacea, many of which develop with immense 
rapidity ;? these in their turn depend for their food upon smaller 
creatures floating in the water, and found everywhere in the 
track of currents. There can be no better evidence of the mass 
of food contained in the sea than is afforded by the examina- 
tion of the contents of a tow-net any night. Pour the contents 
into a glass jar, and note the edge of the vessel exposed to the 
light, —it is covered with crustacea, annelids, and mollusks ; 
and examine also the residue at the bottom, —a true broth, con- 
sisting of the carcasses of all the minute shore and pelagic ani- 
mals, and a mass of spores of all sorts of marine plants. This 
broth is used in the Newport Laboratory to feed young fishes 
and other embryos kept in confinement. 
Nowhere do we see the struggle for existence going on so 
visibly as among the pelagic animals. They all prey one upon 
the other. The acalephs swallow hosts of minute crustacea, 
which in their turn are filled with embryos of crustacea smaller 
than themselves, or with spores of alg:e. 
The crustacea, large and small, form the main food supply of 
the young fishes which dart about in search of nourishment in 
1 The naturalists of the “Challenger” 2 Of some copepods there are no less 
showed that bathybius was only flocculent than thirty generations in three weeks ; 
precipitate of a sulphate of lime, thrown во that, with ample food: and in the ab- 
down from salt water by organic matter sence of enemies, the progeny soon passes 
in the presence of alcohol. beyond. calculation. 
