Page:The ocean and its wonders.djvu/213

 some have got little heads and small fins. Of these last it is said that each little creature has no fewer than three hundred and sixty thousand minute suckers on its head with which it seizes its prey. When we think of the exceeding smallness of the creatures thus preyed upon, and consider the fact that each little thing must obtain food by making war upon some creatures still smaller than itself, we are led almost in spite of ourselves into that mysteriously metaphysical question—infinitesimal divisibility; which may be translated thus—the endless division and subdivision of atoms. This subject has puzzled the heads of the profoundest philosophers of all ages; we will not, therefore, puzzle our readers with it any further.

Scoresby tells us that the colour of the Greenland Sea varies from ultramarine blue to olive-green, from the purest transparency to striking opacity; and that these colours are permanent, and do not depend on the state of the weather, but on the quality of the water. He observed that whales were found in much greater numbers in the green than in the blue water; and he found, on examining the former with the microscope, that its opacity and its colour were due to countless multitudes of those animalcules on which the whale feeds.

We need scarcely remark that it is utterly beyond the power of man to form anything approaching to a correct conception of the amount of life that is thus shown to exist in the ocean. Although it has pleased