THE GREAT DEEPS 115 
mals on the lime-ooze than on the “ red-clay” 
mud-ooze; and we do not know much about 
the thinly peopled miles of water between the 
limit of the light, say half a mile at the most, 
and the floor itself. But the big fact is that 
wherever the long arm of the dredge has 
reached down it has brought up living crea- 
tures. It is astounding to read that on the 
“Michael Sars” exploration, the late Sir 
John Murray and Dr. Johan Hjort worked an 
otter-trawl with a spread of 50 feet at a depth 
of 2820 fathoms, which is over 3 miles! 
NO PLANTS IN THE DEEP SEA 
There are, of course, no plants in the great 
depths, except the resting-stages of a few Alge 
that have sunk down fromthe surface. Wesay, 
‘of course,” because all ordinary plants, pos- 
sessing chlorophyll (disguised by other colours 
in many seaweeds), require light if they are 
to live. This raises an interesting question, for 
if there are no plants it seems at first sight as 
if all the abyssal animals must be eating one 
another, which is absurd, as Euclid used to 
say. No doubt the deep-sea fish eats the deep- 
sea crustacean, and the deep-sea crustacean 
