76 THE HAUNTS OF LIFE 
small, the petrels, the sea-snakes, the herring 
and mackerel, the flying-fishes, the squids, and 
some of the prawn-like crustaceans. The 
drifters may be illustrated by the sea-butter- 
flies (delicately built sea-slugs on which 
whalebone whales largely feed), hundreds of 
kinds of small crustaceans, numerous worms 
like the transparent arrow called Sagitta, com- 
plicated colonies like the Portuguese Man-of- 
War, and the sail-bearers (Velella), often 
seen in the Mediterranean in beautiful fleets 
stretching for miles. More familiar are the 
jelly-fishes, often borne into shallow water 
and left stranded in thousands on the beach. 
These two sets of animals, the swimmers 
and the drifters, are so different that it is bet- 
ter to study them separately. They represent, 
so to speak, two different attitudes to life. 
One remembers George Meredith’s lines: 
“ Behold the life of ease, it drifts; 
The sharpened life commands its course. 
She winnows, winnows roughly, sifts 
To dip her chosen in her source. 
Contention is the vital force 
Whence pluck they brains, her prize of gifts.” 
To keep our ideas clear we must understand 
that animals may be tenants of the open sea 
