Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/167

Rh was a rich one, containing five species of fishes, and at least fifteen species of other animals, including "several examples of Salpa, four species of crustaceans, many specimens of Sagitta, several ctenophores, four species of medusoids, and some broken pieces of a jelly-fish." The examination of these specimens found in the vertical net on this occasion is a very useful indication to the reader of what "drifting life," or plankton, is in Antarctic seas, and one wonders at the delicate nature of most of the forms captured in these waters, which are at or about the freezing-point of fresh water, and often considerably below, especially when one knows that a considerable number of these forms must have been taken near the surface, where the ice-pack grinds and crushes in all its fury during violent storms.

So much for the zoology of Antarctic seas. One thing is perfectly clear, and that is that there is an immense field for most interesting exploration of the most useful kind open to those who wish to explore in the South Polar Regions. There is no form of exploration more fascinating and more important than oceanography—physical and biological—in any part of the world, and in no region is it more interesting and important to carry on these investigations than in the seas round about the South Pole. Interesting as is the