Chap. VI.]
ANIMAL LIFE.
161
1842
those we found at Kerguelen Island, it has been named Notothenia Phocæ, from the circumstances in which it was first found.
They occupy the place of the Merlangus Polaris and Ophidium Parryii of the arctic seas, the latter of which they much resemble; like them they conceal themselves from the persecutions of their enemies in the small cracks and cavities of the pack ice, and may be seen when driven from shelter by the ship striking and passing over their protecting pieces of ice.[1] The seals and petrels are their chief enemies, whilst they, in their turn, live upon the smaller cancri and limacinæ. Thus we behold, in these regions, where the vegetable kingdom, which constitutes the support of animal life in milder climates, has no representative, a chain of animal existences, maintained by each preying upon that next below it in the order of created beings, and all eventually nourished and sustained by the minute infusorial animalcula which we found filling the ocean with an in-- ↑ The Sphyræna was in too mutilated a state to determine its specific characteristics; its head, although broken into numerous fragments, proved to be identical with one which the master of a whaler found on the beach at New Zealand, but we could not ascertain to what fish it belonged. It is considered by Dr. Richardson to be of the genus Alepisaurus, but differing from the A. ferox which inhabits the coasts of the island of Madeira. It is, nevertheless, a most ferocious looking fish; and, although we are unable to supply a description sufficient for its specific distinction, there is no doubt of its being an entirely new species. Its long narrow body measured twenty-eight inches in length.
