other rocks brought down by other drifts from
very distant localities. Floating masses of ice
greatly influence the climates both of Europe
and America, and while in some respects the
grandest are occasionally the most destructive
monsters of the deep.

The inhabitants of the sea are varied and
multiplied to an extent often little appreciated.
All classes of animals there find representatives,
and some are almost or entirely confined to
water as the element in which they live and
breathe. Of the mammals, or sucking animals,
—the quadrupeds of every-day life—there are
numerous examples, not less remarkable for
their vast proportions than for their usefulness
to man. The whales of all kinds haunt the
open ocean, some of them being the largest
animals in creation. The common whalebone
whale, sixty feet long, and whose head alone
measures twenty feet in length, weighs not less
than seventy tons when in condition. This
animal is unable to take within its capacious
jaws any substance except the most minute and
soft animal matter, and feeds on food
apparently quite inadequate to sustain such gigantic
life. Other whales are still larger and yet more
strangely proportioned, and are supplied with
different food, generally, however, cuttle-fish
and other small animals. All kinds are capable
of extremely rapid motion through the water,
and, strange as they may seem, are admirably
adapted to the element they inhabit. The
pursuit of the whale, for the sake of its oil, is one
of the most exciting of all fisheries, and is not
unfrequently accompanied by great danger to
those concerned. It is, however, a trade carried
on by a large number of hardy navigators both
European and American, and the search after
new whale grounds has resulted occasionally in
important geographical discoveries.

Other large and cumbrous animals, suckling
their young and provided with at least the
rudiments of arms and legs, though externally
fishlike, are often met with in high latitudes, and
occasionally characterise even tropical seas.
Some of these, such as the seal and walrus, are
quite distinct from the whales, while others
approach the latter far more nearly in their
structure. The dugong and the manatee are of
this kind, and from their occasional habit of
swimming with their calf-like heads out of the
water, they have given rise to a large class of
fables of fabulous animals of which the
mermaid and perhaps the great sea-serpent may
serve as illustrations. The larger seals, as well
as these sea-cows (as the manatee is called), yield
much valuable oil, and are killed off very rapidly
for this purpose. More than three millions of
seals are reported to have been taken on one
group of islands in Behring Sea in the fifty years
terminating in 1833, while nearly three-quarters
of a million of seal-skins were wilfully destroyed
by the Russian Fur Company in 1803 for the
purpose of preventing a glut in the market.
The walrus is a fiercer animal than the seal,
and not unfrequently attacks its human enemies,
but it generally falls. The white or polar bear
and the sea otter may also be regarded as marine
animals, since they live almost entirely on or under
the ice, where they obtain their food, rarely
approaching land.

The birds that belong to the sea are very
curious, and their numbers beyond all calculation.
"Every naked rock or surf-beaten cliff
that rises over the immeasurable deserts of
ocean, is the refuge of myriads of sea-birds;
every coast from the poles to the equator is
covered with their legions, and far from the land
their swarms hover over the solitudes of the
deep."

The penguins are, perhaps, of all others the
birds that most widely depart from the ordinary
type of their class. Their wings are adapted
exclusively for motion in water, and they swim
with such rapidity and perseverance, with the
head alone out of water, that they frequently
overtake fishes in fair pursuit. They live in the
sea, and have been met with a thousand miles
from the nearest known land. The larger birds
of this kind sometimes weigh as much as eighty
pounds, and in their stomachs have been found
ten pounds' weight of pebbles and large stones,
swallowed, no doubt, to assist the gizzard to
pound up the food submitted to its action.

The frigate-bird, the petrel, and the albatross,
seem to range through the air over the whole
extent of ocean from coast to coast of the Atlantic
and Pacific. The pelican also, and the cormorant,
are far more nearly dependent on water than land,
and strictly belong to our present subject. They
are all birds of powerful and rapid flight, feeding
on fishes, and rarely seen far inland, though often
stretching to great distances across wide
expanses of sea. Thanks to them we have those
accumulated masses of guano which help to
fertilise our lands. Some idea of the extent of
these masses may be obtained when it is stated
that, on the island of Iquique alone, upwards of
six millions of cubic feet of guano have been
removed within the last thirty years, while in
the year 1854, not less than half a million of
tons were exported from the Chincha Islands.

Although there is no reliable evidence of the
existence in the ocean of a gigantic reptile
resembling a serpent, there are undeniable sea-
snakes, poisonous, but of no large dimensions.
Lizards also, three or four feet long, and
inoffensive, are met with in the Pacific, and turtles
of large size are common throughout the warmer
seas, being occasionally drifted into cool
latitudes. Green turtles from the West Indies,
nearly half a ton in weight, and six feet long,
have even been taken on our own shores. These
animals live entirely at sea, only visiting warm
shoals for the purpose of laying their eggs, which
are hatched in the sun.

Reptiles were not always rare animals in the
ocean, for we have in many rocks throughout
Europe, abundant evidence of the former
presence of gigantic marine animals of this class,
rivalling in size and exceeding in voracity the
largest existing inhabitants of the deep.

We are apt to look upon fishes as the only fit
tenants of the water, and doubtless they are in