1885.] Life and Nature in Southern Labrador. 369 
With our man, James Mosier, and his sailboat we spent two 
days in dredging in from forty to fifty fathoms out in the Straits 
of Belle Isle, three or four miles from land. The collection was 
a valuable one, containing some new species. The crown of the 
bank which we raked with our poorly constructed dredge was 
packed with starfish, polyzoans, ascidians, shells, worms and 
Crustacea. .The collection was purely arctic, and had not the 
only dredge I had become broken, we should have reaped, or 
rather dredged, a rich harvest. As it was, the novelties were 
quite numerous, and the interest and excitement, as well as labor, 
of overhauling, sorting and preserving what we did obtain lasted 
for several days. 
The only plant besides stony vegetable growths called “ nulli- 
pores” dredged at this depth was a delicate red sea-weed, the 
Ptilota elegans, which was found afterwards to extend as far down 
in depth as ninety fathoms. Those who glibly talk, on zerra 
firma, of plant life as affording a basis for animal life, should 
dredge in deep water. They will find that a vast population of 
animals of all sorts and conditions in the scale of life is spread at 
all depths over the sea bottom, thriving almost without exception 
on one another—on animal protoplasm—and in the beginning of 
creation animal life was without doubt contemporaneous in ap- 
pearance with vegetable existence. Indeed, what is the differ- 
ence in form and structure bétween a bacterium and a moner ? 
The two worlds of plant and animal life arise from the same base, 
a common foundation of simplest structure, showing none of the 
distinctive characteristics of animal or plant life, and only barely 
earning the right to be called organisms, that vague term we 
apply for convenience to any, even the simplest structures en- 
dowed with life. 
Of all the pleasures ot a naturalist’s existence, dredging has 
_ been, to our mind, the most intense. The severe exertion, the 
swimming brain, the qualms of sea sickness, tired arms and a 
broken back, the memory of all these fade away at the sight of 
the new world of life, or at least the samples of such a world, 
which lie wriggling and sprawling on the deck of the sailboat, or 
sink out of sight in the mud and ooze of the dredge, to be 
brought to light by vigorous dashes of water drawn in over the 
side of the boat. Those days of dredging on the Labrador 
coast, where there was such an abundance and luxuriance of 
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