Newfoundland in 1897 - Rumbolt

114 NEWFOUNDLAND:
great rivers which they send forth are swarming with
minute forms of life, constituting, in the words of
"
Professor Hind, in many places a living mass, a vast
ocean of living slime ;
and the all-pervading life which
exists there affords the true solution of the problem
which has so often presented itself to those engaged in
the great fisheries where the food comes from which
gives sustenance to the countless millions of fish which
swarm on the coasts of Labrador, Newfoundland, the
Dominion of Canada, and the United States, or wherever
the Arctic current exerts an active influence." This
living slime of the ocean is most abundant in the
coldest water, and especially in the neighbourhood of
ice. The ice-laden current from Baffin's Bay brings
with it those forms of marine life, from the diatom to
the minute crustacean, from the minute crustacean to
the crab and prawn, together with the molluscous
animals and starfish in vast profusion. The " slime-
food " sustains the minute crustaceans ; and these in
their turn furnish food for the herring which swarm on
the shores, in the bays, and especially on the Grand
Banks. The herring, with multitudes of smaller forms,
are devoured by the cod. When the cod is assimilated
by man, the great circle of Nature is complete. As long,
then, as the Arctic current flows, the existence of the
cod fishery of Newfoundland is assured.
Very wonderful are these great processes of Nature.
These vast ice-fields, and countless battalions of ice-
bergs, the terror of mariners, sailing majestically past
these shores, and often grounding along Labrador and
in the bays of Newfoundland, bring with them slime-