i 9 io] LIFE IN THE PACK 67 
Feeding on these diatoms arc countless thousands of 
small shrimps (Euphausia) ; they can be seen swimming 
at the edge of every floe and washing about on the over- 
turned pieces. In turn they afford food for creatures 
great and small : the crab-cater or white seal, the penguins, 
the Antarctic and snowy petrel, and an unknown number 
of fish. 
These fish must be plentiful, as shown by our capture 
of one on an overturned floe and the report of several seen 
two days ago by some men leaning over the counter of the 
ship. These all exclaimed together, and on inquiry all 
agreed that they had seen half a dozen or more a foot 
or so in length swimming away under a floe. Seals and 
penguins capture these fish, as also, doubtless, the skuas 
and the petrels. 
Coming to the larger mammals, one occasionally sees 
the long lithe sea-leopard, formidably armed with fero- 
cious teeth and doubtless containing a penguin or two 
and perhaps a young crab-eating seal. The killer whale 
(Orca gladiator), unappeasably voracious, devouring or 
attempting to devour every smaller animal, is less common 
in the pack but numerous on the coasts. Finally, we have 
the great browsing whales of various species, from the vast 
blue whale {Bakznoptera Sibbaldt), the largest mammal 
of all time, to the smaller and less common bottle-nose 
and such species as have not yet been named. Great 
numbers of these huge animals arc seen, and one realises 
what a demand they must make on their food supply and 
therefore how immense a supply of small sea beasts these 
seas must contain. Beneath the placid ice floes and under 
