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THE SEAS
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of the animals and plants of the plankton by large oœano—
graphical expeditions which have been sent out by different
countries during the last fty years, andit is fairly established that all the waters of the globe are inhabited by them.
Just as on land, the various species of plants and animals
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have their own distribution, some living in tropical climes
and others in the far north or south, so it is noticed that
many members of the plankton' are to be found only in
certain regions and may give the catches made in those ,
localities a characteristic appearance.
Amongst diatoms,
for instance, there are species that are n‘ormally only found '
in coastal regions, others that occur only in the open ocean
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waters of tropical and sub—tropical regions, and others
again that characterize the catches of northern waters.
But while species of these little drifting plants are.to be'
found almost anyWhere in the oceans all over the world, the
cool temperate and the cold arctic and antarctic waters are
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known to carry this .diatom, life in quantities far
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exceeding the other_regions.
The waters that bathe the'
shores Of the British Isles, of Holland, Sweden, Denmark,
Norway and Iceland, on the east, and of Greenland, New—
foundland and the Gulf'of Maine in America on
possess a richer pasturage of microscopic plant life than isÏ
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to be found in any other locality in the North Atlantic
Ocean.
The signicanCe of the plankton plants in. the
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general economy of the sea will then become at once
apparent, when it is realized lth_at it is precisely these
regions, the North Sea, the Baltic, the Norwegian and
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Greenland Seas, and the banks of Newfoundland, that give
rise to the greatest sheries in the Atlantic, and in fact in
the whole world.
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“Dependent on,the diatomS are, of course, the Small
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animals of the plankton', and .it is natural to suppose that
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where the, plant life is most abund‘ant there will be found