Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology21894univ).pdf/25
where by tubes and burrows, and when broken to pieces with a hammer each mass of coral gave us specimens of nearly every great group in the animal kingdom. Fishes, crustacea, annelids, mollusca, echinoderms, hydroids and sponges could be picked out of the fragments and the abundance of life inside the solid rock was most wonderful.
The absence of pelagic life in the landlocked water of coral islands is as impressive as noteworthy as the luxuriance of life upon and near the bottom.
On my first visit to the Bahama Islands I was sadly disappointed by the absence of pelagic animals where all the conditions seemed to be peculiarly favorable.
The deep ocean is so near that, as once cruises through the inner sounds past the openings between the islets which form the outer barrier, the deep blue water of mid-ocean is seen to meet the white sand of the beach, and soundings show that the outer edge is a precipice as high as the side of Chimborazo and much steeper.
Nowhere else in the world is the pure water of the deep sea found nearer land or more free from sediment, and on the days when the weather was favorable for outside collecting we found siphonophores and pteropods, pelagic molluscs and crustacea and tunicates and all sorts of pelagic larvæ in great abundance in the open water just outside the inlets.
Inside the barrier the water was always calm, and day after day it was as smooth as the surface of an inland lake. When I first entered one of these beautiful sounds, where the calm transparent water stretches as far as the eye can reach, while new beauties of islets and winding channels open before one as those which are passed fade away on the horizon, I felt sure that I had at last found a place where the pelagic fauna of mid-ocean could be gathered at our door and studied on shore. The water proved to be not only as pure as air but almost as empty. At high water we sometimes captured a few pelagic animals near the inlets, but we dragged our surface nets through the sounds day after day only to find them as clean as if they had been