Page:The ocean and its wonders.djvu/78

 table; but the same species, when taken off the warm coral banks of the Bahamas, are scarcely worth eating. In fact, we see no reason for doubting that when these fish find their health giving way in the warm regions of the south, they seek to reïnvigorate themselves by change of water; and, quitting for a time the beauteous coral groves, spend a few of the summer months of each year in gambolling in the cool regions of the north, or, what is much the same thing, in those cool currents that flow from the north in clearly defined channels.



Besides its other useful and manifold purposes, the Gulf Stream would seem to be one of the great purveyors of food to the whales. Sea-nettles, or medusæ, are well known to constitute the principal food of that species of whale which is termed the right whale. Navigators have frequently observed large quantities of these medusæ floating along with the Gulf Stream; and one sea captain in particular fell in with an extraordinarily large quantity of them, of a very peculiar species, off the coast of