THE FAUNA 167 



be the blind scallops of the genus Amussium, and one 

 of the strangest is Pontiothauma mirabile, whose shell 

 grows to a length of 42 inches, and looks just like 

 that of a large whelk from the northern seas. The 

 creature itself is without eyes, and although it is a 

 Gastropod, has, according to Mr Edgar Smith, no 

 radula. Lastly, in depths where there is such a 

 plentiful supply of food, in the shape of crustaceans 

 and mollusks, it is not surprising to find that fishes 

 are numerous. Nearly fifty species have already been 

 discovered, of which twenty are, so far as our present 

 knowledge goes, peculiar to the shades of this 

 sea. 



To sum up : if we could make a Brobdingnagian 

 picture of the basin in which this deep-sea fauna lives, 

 we should first of all be struck by the abundance of 

 rare corals : we should see large solitary species grow- 

 ing like flowers of the field, while the branching 

 species would form thickets in whose grottoes crusta- 

 ceans of many kinds would be observed lurking. In 

 some places the bottom w^ould be carpeted with a 

 mosaic of starfishes of beautiful red and orange hues, 

 in other places multitudes of the reed-like tubes of 

 the sea-worm Hyalincecia would show like fields of 

 stubble, while in other places we should find beds of 

 strange bivalves [Amttssiumj Lima, Limopsis) like the 

 oyster-beds and mussel-beds of shallow water ; and 

 through the dead-still waters above, shoals of curious 



