LIFE IN THE SEA

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume XLVI, Issue 3262, 12 October 1928, Page 4

LIFE IN THE SEA

"The sea contains a vast population, beside.which that of the land sinks into insignificance," says Dr. R. L. Praeger, in the Cornhill Magazine. "Every drop of sea water taken at or near the surface is crowded with very minute plants known as diatoms. In countless millions they swarm and propagate, from the pole to the equator, absorbing solar energy and using it to buld up the complicated chemical substances which form their. bodies. Countless millions of minute animals find in these microscopic plants their food supply. On these microscopic animal forms, in turn, larger sea-beasts prey, and so on, it may be through a chain of many links till we reach the giants of the ocean. On land the similar chain of food-sup-ply is * interwoven across the surface only, or very close to it. In the sea it originates on the surface, but its links spread downward into the profoundest depths, sometimes in the form

-••.-.'■ ...x.-'.^jsy . of living animals, often as dead matter, sinking slowly to provide nourishment for the hungry creatures of the middle waters and of the distant ocean floor. So it comes about that the li_& of the depths owes its existence amp continuance wholly to that sun, which, to the ereatures living under tfiat black pall of water, might be deemed as ineffective as the furthest star. Life in the sea, especially, but not only, among the smaller organisms, its fecundity, and the destruction to which it is subject, is on a scale which beggars imagination."