CTENOPHORES IN THE FLOE-ICE. 



Ill 



attrition of the cakes of ice ground together by the slight 

 swell or the conflicting currents, lent unending interest 

 to the scene. The floes had evidently the air of tired 

 and worn travellers ; they had been borne for at least a 

 thousand miles from Baffin's Bay ; had been thrown upon 

 one another by storms and ocean currents, broken and 

 frozen together over and over again ; they were now rap- 

 idly melting away in the bright, warm sun, for the water 

 was filled with bits of clear dark icfe, the fragments of large 

 floes. Our vessel, her sails scarcely filled out by the light 

 baffling breeze, rose and fell, ploughing her way through 

 the yielding floes. The water between the cakes was 

 alive with bits of animated ice, myriads of transparent 

 Ctenophores crowding the sea from the surface to a depth 

 of a fathom or more. The roseate Idyia, throwing off 

 the most delicate reddish tints, seemed be- 

 sides to reflect the delicate blues and 

 greens cast off by the floes ; an Alcinoe- 

 like form, floating on its side, with blood- 

 red tentacles, rose and sank among the ice- 

 cakes, and with these in lesser numbers 

 was associated that beautiful spherical liv- 

 ing ball of ice, the Beroe or Pleurobrachia 

 rhododactyla. 



the Mertensia ovum, a creature as fragile as it is beauti- 

 ful. .It is of a delicate pink color, with iridescent hues ; 

 the ovaries bright red, the deep purple-red tentacles in 

 striking contrast with the delicate tints of the body itself. 

 From this point until we reached Hopedale in lat. 55" 

 30' it constantly occurred in the floe-ice, but was rarely 

 seen in waters from which the ice had disappeared, as in 

 harbors free from ice the Mertensia would keep out of 



Idyia roseola; nat- 



The Alcmoe-like form was urai size. ■ 



