AN ATACTIC PTEROPOD. 21 5 



at the touch of heaven. . . . All the wildness and 

 waste, all the sternest desolations of the whole earth, 

 brought together to wed and enhance each other, and 

 then relieved by splendor without equal, perhaps, in the 

 world, — that is Labrador." 



Nearly all the next day was spent in beating down 

 the coast, finding ourselves at evening off our old haven, 

 Strawberry Harbor, which we did not enter, but re- 

 mained outside of it, holding on to the rocks in twenty- 

 five fathoms with our kedge. We lay over the edge of 

 a submarine precipice, or, as I supposed, a rock terrace 

 or shelf like those ashore ; for just before anchoring the 

 lead reached a depth of forty fathoms, showing quite 

 plainly that the terraced character of the rock, which 

 extends up the shore for a distance of perhaps 300 or 

 400 feet, also extends beneath the ocean to a depth of 

 at least fifty fathoms or three hundred feet, thus con- 

 clusively proving that the coast had once been much 

 higher than at present, and also showing how little the 

 floe-ice had smoothed down the ocean-bottom near 

 shore. 



The next day we reached, but did not double, Cape 

 Webuc (Harrison), as it was called, in the afternoon, and 

 Mr. Bradford spent every available moment in painting 

 icebergs. In the calm water we met with great num- 

 bers of that interesting and curious arctic pteropod, 

 Limacina helicina ; drawing up some in a bucket and 

 placing them in a glass of sea-water, the beautiful move- 

 ments of these delicate forms could be seen. They were 

 like winged sweet-peas — the shape of the body and color 

 suggesting the resemblance. It had not previously been 

 recorded as occurring south of the Greenland seas. The 



