190 



ATLANTIC OCEAN. 



Dec. 1833. 



on this part five most minute cups are placed^ which seem 

 to act in the same manner as the suckers on the arms of the 

 cuttle-fish. As the animal lives in the open sea^ and pro- 

 bably wants a place of rest^ I suppose this beautiful structure 

 is adapted to take hold of the globular bodies of the Medusee^ 

 and other floating marine animals. 



In deep water^ far from the land^ the number of living 

 creatures is extremely small : south of the latitude 35°^ I 

 never succeeded in catching any thing besides some beroe^ 

 and a few species of minute Crustacea belonging to the En- 

 tomostraca. In shoaler water^ at the distance of a few 

 miles from the coast^ very many kinds of Crustacea and 

 some other animals were numerous^ but only during the 

 night. Between latitudes 56° and 57° south of Cape 

 Horn the net was put astern several times; it never, 

 however, brought up any thing besides a few of two ex- 

 tremely minute species of Entomostraca. Yet whales 

 and seals, petrels and albatross, are exceedingly abundant 

 throughout this part of the ocean. It has always been 

 a source of mystery to me, on what the latter, which live 

 far from the shore, can subsist. I presume the albatross, 

 like the condor, is able to fast long ; and that one good feast 

 on the carcass of a putrid whale lasts for a long siege of 

 hunger. It does not lessen the difficulty to say, they feed 

 on fish ; for on what can the fish feed ? It often occurred to 

 me, when observing how the waters of the central and inter- 

 tropical parts of the Atlantic,"!' swarmed with Pteropoda, Crus- 

 tacea, and Radiata, and with their devourers the flying-fish, 

 and again with their devourers the bonitos and albicores, 

 that the lowest of these pelagic animals perhaps possess 

 the power of decomposing carbonic acid gas, like the mem- 

 bers of the vegetable kingdom. 



While sailing in these latitudes on one very dark night, 



* From my experience, which has been but Httle, I should say that the 

 Atlantic was far more prolific than the Pacific, at least, than in that im- 

 mense open area, between the west coast of America and the extreme 

 eastern isles of Polynesia. 



