eye and
enable it more fully to appreciate the virgin drapery of the scene. All
this, seen in detail--seen frequently in rapid succession--sometimes
seen almost all at one moment,--all this is absolutely beyond
conception, and utterly beyond adequate description. Yet all this is
seen at times in those realms of ice and snow, which are, as we have
already said, too much represented as the "gloomy, forbidding,
inhospitable polar regions."

There are two sides to every picture. We take leave of this particular
branch of our sun with the remark, that if the shady side of the far
north is dreadfully dark and dreary, its bright side is intensely
brilliant and beautiful.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE SEA--MEDUSAE--FOOD OF THE WHALE--PHOSPHORIC LIGHT--
CAUSE THEREOF--LUMINOSITY OF THE OCEAN.

Reference has elsewhere been made in this volume to the immense amount
of animal life that exists in the ocean, not only in the form of fish of
all sizes, but in that of animalcules, which, although scarcely visible
to the naked eye, are, in some cases, so innumerable as to give a
distinct colouring to the water.

The _Medusae_, or, more familiarly, sea blubbers, are seen in the waters
that lave our own shores. They are of various sizes, from that of a
large plate to a pin-head. They are almost colourless, like clear
jelly, and when carelessly observed, seem to be dead objects drifting
with the tide; but a closer observation shows that they are possessed of
life, though not of a particularly active kind, and that they swim by
alternate contractions and expansions of their bodies. These creatures
constitute a large part of the whale's food. Some of them are flat,
some semi-globular, others are bell-shaped, while 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
r