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398
LIFE.
are found united. It is in the neighboring seas that the Esquimaux, whose
name signifies "eater of raw fish," finds his food in abundance ; it is there
that the fishermen—English, French, and American—go each year to seek
their provisions from the two or three millions of codfish left by the multitudes of cetaceae that are always at work. In the North Pacific, on the
shores of Japan, round the Canaries, are other fisheries scarcely less rich,
whence the net is sure to bring each time numerous victims.
As to the marine animals other than fish, a number of species swarm in
masses all the more compact the smaller the individuals themselves are.
From the heights of the promontories which rise in peaks above the gulfs
of New Granada to the east of Santa Martha, the sea is sometimes seen as
far as the horizon filled with yellow medusae, so crowded one against the
other that the color of the waters is quite changed by them. A swarm
of medusae, through the midst of which Piazzi Smyth passed in July, 1856,
to the north of the Canaries, occupied a space about forty-five miles wide,
and comprehended in the superficial bed alone two hundred and twenty-
five millions of individuals. Whales and other cetaceae devoured enormous quantities of these graceful orange-veined medusae, and, on their
side, each of these animals absorbed myriads of siliceous diatoms. The
quantity of these inferior organisms contained in the stomach of each medusa amounts certainly to seven hundred thousand; it is therefore by
tens of thousands and by millions that we must estimate the creatures
swarming in each wave.* Sailors, accustomed to see the innumerable
multitudes of medusae, only see in them " the scum of the sea;" and Bacon
himself, that great observer, thought that the marine jelly-fish were nothing else than " heated foam." More poetically, the Peruvians of the coast
of Iquique give to one of these animals the elegant name of Aqua viva,\
or " living water."
Sometimes the sea is so filled with living organisms that one might call
it saturated, and its color is entirely changed by the floating multitudes.
Thus on the coasts of Greenland seamen traverse broad bands of a deep
brown or olive-green color, being frequently one hundred and eighty and
even two hundred and fifty miles long; they are banks of medusae, every
cubic inch of water containing hundreds, and swallowed by hundreds of
thousands in every mouthful of a whale. Elsewhere navigators observe
immense " sea-serpents," formed by innumerable salpas, which are attached
to one another like the particles of one arid the same body, or else they
form expanses without visible limits, some red as blood, others white as
milk. There they are not banks, but toorlds of animals, where^each drop
contains as many as there are stars in the milky way. In August, 1854,
Captain Kingman traversed in the Indian Ocean a space more than twenty-five miles wide, the whiteness of which was dazzling enough to extinguish the light of the stars; and when the sea of animalculae was passed,
the sky above it was for a long time seen to shine as with the light of a
feeble aurora borealis. Ten years later, the vessel La Sarthe found again
* Piazzi Smyth, Teneriffe, pp. 5, 6. f Bollaert, Antiquities, p. 256.
| Title | The ocean, atmosphere, and life |
| Creator | Reclus, Elisée |
| Publisher | Harper |
| Place of Publication | New York |
| Date | 1873 |
| Language | eng |
| Type | Books/Pamphlets |
| Title | 00000441 |
| Type | Books/Pamphlets |
| Transcript | 398 LIFE. are found united. It is in the neighboring seas that the Esquimaux, whose name signifies "eater of raw fish," finds his food in abundance ; it is there that the fishermen—English, French, and American—go each year to seek their provisions from the two or three millions of codfish left by the multitudes of cetaceae that are always at work. In the North Pacific, on the shores of Japan, round the Canaries, are other fisheries scarcely less rich, whence the net is sure to bring each time numerous victims. As to the marine animals other than fish, a number of species swarm in masses all the more compact the smaller the individuals themselves are. From the heights of the promontories which rise in peaks above the gulfs of New Granada to the east of Santa Martha, the sea is sometimes seen as far as the horizon filled with yellow medusae, so crowded one against the other that the color of the waters is quite changed by them. A swarm of medusae, through the midst of which Piazzi Smyth passed in July, 1856, to the north of the Canaries, occupied a space about forty-five miles wide, and comprehended in the superficial bed alone two hundred and twenty- five millions of individuals. Whales and other cetaceae devoured enormous quantities of these graceful orange-veined medusae, and, on their side, each of these animals absorbed myriads of siliceous diatoms. The quantity of these inferior organisms contained in the stomach of each medusa amounts certainly to seven hundred thousand; it is therefore by tens of thousands and by millions that we must estimate the creatures swarming in each wave.* Sailors, accustomed to see the innumerable multitudes of medusae, only see in them " the scum of the sea;" and Bacon himself, that great observer, thought that the marine jelly-fish were nothing else than " heated foam." More poetically, the Peruvians of the coast of Iquique give to one of these animals the elegant name of Aqua viva,\ or " living water." Sometimes the sea is so filled with living organisms that one might call it saturated, and its color is entirely changed by the floating multitudes. Thus on the coasts of Greenland seamen traverse broad bands of a deep brown or olive-green color, being frequently one hundred and eighty and even two hundred and fifty miles long; they are banks of medusae, every cubic inch of water containing hundreds, and swallowed by hundreds of thousands in every mouthful of a whale. Elsewhere navigators observe immense " sea-serpents," formed by innumerable salpas, which are attached to one another like the particles of one arid the same body, or else they form expanses without visible limits, some red as blood, others white as milk. There they are not banks, but toorlds of animals, where^each drop contains as many as there are stars in the milky way. In August, 1854, Captain Kingman traversed in the Indian Ocean a space more than twenty-five miles wide, the whiteness of which was dazzling enough to extinguish the light of the stars; and when the sea of animalculae was passed, the sky above it was for a long time seen to shine as with the light of a feeble aurora borealis. Ten years later, the vessel La Sarthe found again * Piazzi Smyth, Teneriffe, pp. 5, 6. f Bollaert, Antiquities, p. 256. |
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