THE OPEN SEA 65 
ants; deeper down where the light is less 
abundant there are more animals than plants; 
deeper still there are animals only. 
If the shore area is the Great School of life, 
where animals have learned and are still 
learning many lessons, the open sea may be 
looked on as the cradle of life. There are 
many authorities who believe that it was there 
that life had its beginnings, far back in the 
dim past. “There can be little doubt,” writes 
one, “that the pelagic fauna antedated all the 
faunas of the globe, and that from it, through 
a long process of modification and adaptation, 
have been derived the faunas of the shore, 
the abyssal depths, the land surface, and the 
fresh waters.” 
But this question of beginnings is too diff- 
cult for us; we must content ourselves with 
taking the “ pelagic fauna,” which means sim- 
ply the animals of the surface of the sea, as 
we find it now. But even now we are justified 
in speaking of the open sea as the cradle of 
life, for many of the animals which, in their 
adult state, live amid the turmoil and struggle 
of the shore, spend their delicate youth in the 
easier conditions of the open sea. The eggs 
and larve of some fishes, too, whose home is 
