MARINE LIFE. Afore than one hundred and twenty-five species of fishes have been taken within the Arctic Circle, and valuable fisheries exist on the northern coasts of Russia, in the waters about. Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, and might be organized north of Bering Strait. The most important arc cod, halibut, flatfish, and related forms; but many bottom-feeding families are represented as far north as knowl edge extends. Several species of salmon or trout ascend Arctic rivers, the most northerly ease being that of Salta° arcturus, taken in Grinnell Land (latitude 82°). Food for many of these fishes, and for seals and walruses, is afforded by a large variety of mollusks, includ ing squids, clams. and mussels, and a long list of gastropods, chiefly of the families Pleuro tomidte, Buccinithe, Nataeidle, and Trochithe. Nearly one 111111(11.M species have been aata logned, a large proportion of which also exist in temperate latitudes. The great abundance of diatoms and the general prevalence of low sustain these and similar low animals. No mollusks are more widespread and numer ous, however, than the pteropods, especially of the genera Clione and Limacina, and they fur nish an important element in whale diet. There are also •hitons and sea-slugs. Crusta•ea abound in the Arctic seas. A few are of the
higher forms, allied to crabs and shrimps, but mainly they are entomostracans of small size and pelagic life. Such amphipods as Anonyx and Ilippolyte are well represented in the ex treme north at various depths, as also are the copepods, isopods, barnacles, and pycnogonids; and the specimens of such species as are also known southward are very much larger than their southern equivalents. All of these, and especially the copepods, are of great economic importance as food for whales. They are an ex ample of the power of resigting cold possessed by these creatures, for they survive freezing for a long period. and their eggs are still more hardy. The shores and shallows of the Arctic Ocean also abound in annelids, of which twenty or more species have been collected, and which form an important element in the diet of the larger denizens of those seas; and the still humbler ranks of life are represented by jelly fishes and hydroids. especially varied and nu merous north of Alaska, and by polyzoans and test-bearing protozoans in great numbers. Sea weeds diminish toward the extreme north to a very few olive-colored kinds, and seem to be more abundant north of Europe than in the American Arctic regions.