ce,
even descending to the abyssal depths.

Wherever the _plancton_ goes, there is living animation, grouping
itself in closely packed colonies. The purest and most translucent salt
water shows under certain luminous rays a multitude of little bodies as
restless as the dust motes that dance in shafts of sunlight. These
transparent beings mingled with microscopic algae and embryonic
mucosities are the _plancton_. In its dense mass, scarcely visible to
the human eye, float the _siphonoforas_, garlands of entities united by
a transparent thread as fragile, delicate and luminous as Bohemian
crystal. Other equally subtle organisms have the form of little glass
torpedoes. The sum of all the albuminous materials floating on the sea
are condensed in these nutrient clouds to which are added the
secretions of living animals, the remnants of cadavers, the bodies
brought down by the rivers, and the nourishing fragments from the
meadows of algae.

When the _plancton_, either by chance or following some mysterious
attraction, accumulates on some determined point of the shore, the
waters boil with fishes of an astonishing fertility. The seaside towns
increase in number, the sea is filled with sails, the tables are more
opulent, industries are established, factories are opened and money
circulates along the coast, attracted thither from the interior by the
commerce in fresh and dried fish.

If the _plancton_ capriciously withdraws itself, floating toward
another shore, the marine herds emigrate behind these living meadows,
and the blue plain remains as empty as a desert accursed. The fleets of
fishing boats are placed high and dry on the beach, the shops are
closed, the stewpot is no longer steaming, the horses of the
gendarmerie charge against protesting and famine stricken crowds, the
Opposition howls in the Chambers, and the newspapers make the
Government responsible for everything.

This animal and vegetable dust nourishes the most numerous species
which, in their turn, serve as pasture for the great swimmers armed
with teeth.

The whales, most bulky of all the oceanic inhabitants, close this
destructive cycle, since they devour each other in order to live. The
Pacific giant, without teeth, supplies his organism with _plancton_
alone, absorbing it by the ton; that imperceptible and crystalline
manna nourishes his body (looking like an overturned belfry), and makes
purple, fatty rivers of warm blood circulate under its oily s