190 ATLANTIC OCEAN. Dec. 1833. 



on this part five most minute cups are placed, which seem 

 to act in the same manner as the suckers on the arms of the 

 cuttle-fish. As the animal lives in the open sea, and pro- 

 bably wants a place of rest, I suppose this beautiful structure 

 is adapted to take hold of the globular bodies of the Medusae, 

 and other floating marine animals. 



In deep water, far from the land, the number of living 

 creatures is extremely small : south of the latitude 35°, I 

 never succeeded in catching any thing besides some beroe, 

 and a few species of minute Crustacea belonging to the En- 

 tomostraca. In shoaler water, at the distance of a few 

 miles from the coast, very many kinds of Crustacea and 

 some other animals were numerous, but only during the 

 night. Between latitudes 56° and 57° south of ^Cape 

 Horn the net was put astern several times ; it never, 

 however, brought up any thing besides a few of two ex- 

 tremely minute species of Entomostraca. Yet whales 

 and seals, petrels and albatross, are exceedingly abundant 

 throughout this part of the ocean. It has always been 

 a source of mystery to me, on what the latter, which live 

 far from the shore, can subsist. I presume the albatross, 

 like the condor, is able to fast long ; and that one good feast 

 on the carcass of a putrid whale lasts for a long siege of 

 hunger. It does not lessen the difficulty to say, they feed 

 on fish ; for on what can the fish feed ? It often occurred to 

 me, when observing how the waters of the central and inter- 

 tropical parts of the Atlantic,* swarmed with Pteropoda, Crus- 

 tacea, and Radiata, and with their devourers the flying-fish, 

 and again with their devourers the bonitos and albicores, 

 that the lowest of these pelagic animals perhaps possess 

 the power of decomposing carbonic acid gas, like the mem- 

 bers of the vegetable kingdom. 



While sailing in these latitudes on one very dark night, 



* From my experience, which has been but Httle, I should say that the 

 Atlantic was far more prolific than the Pacific, at least, than in that im- 

 mense open area, between the west coast of America and the extreme 

 eastern isles of Polynesia. 



