Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/185

] those we found at Kerguelen Island, it has been named Notothenia Phocæ, from the circumstances in which it was first found.

They occupy the place of the Merlangus Polaris and Ophidium Parryii of the arctic seas, the latter of which they much resemble; like them they conceal themselves from the persecutions of their enemies in the small cracks and cavities of the pack ice, and may be seen when driven from shelter by the ship striking and passing over their protecting pieces of ice. The seals and petrels are their chief enemies, whilst they, in their turn, live upon the smaller cancri and limacinæ. Thus we behold, in these regions, where the vegetable kingdom, which constitutes the support of animal life in milder climates, has no representative, a chain of animal existences, maintained by each preying upon that next below it in the order of created beings, and all eventually nourished and sustained by the minute infusorial animalcula which we found filling the ocean with an