Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/88

84 From this it will be seen that sea ice especially, and even the surface of glacier ice is swarming with life, and is by no means so sterile as it is usually thought to be. Bacteriological examination has demonstrated that the air of the Polar Regions is sterile, but under natural conditions in the Polar Regions, as in other regions, we may lay down a general law, and say—Where there is water there is life! It matters not whether this water be frozen with all the rigour of a polar winter, subjected even to over one hundred degrees of frost (F.). Melt this ice, whether fresh or salt, and life will be found. In Franz Josef Land I melted out solidly-frozen pieces of wet moss and soil, that had been subjected to a temperature of -45° F. or 77 degrees of frost, and as soon as they were melted myriads of animals and plants began "to live, and move, and have their being," after a death-like winter sleep. Many algæ and even the mosses themselves continued life where they had suddenly stopped active living with the onrush of the winter frost. They had remained dormant during several winter months, and now active life suddenly began again. Innumerable wheel animalcules (Rotifera) and water-bears (Tardigrada) once more began to move and live, and in one case a small nematode worm that had evidently been on the point of laying its eggs when