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fishing to be had. On the oceanward slope of the above-named
«edge» there is a similar, but still more abundant animal life.
Here too is the haunt of millions of cod. from the time that the
year-and-a-half-old fry set out to sea, to the time when they return
again, fullgrown, to the coast to spawn.
In spite of its abundance, there is something uniform in the
animal life in such suddenly deep places. Where it is more flatly
shallow, or rather where the steep parts are replaced by plateaus
covered with sand and shingle, we find not only the above-named
animals, but a great number of others, sea-urchins, star-fishes,
brittle-stars, crinoids, molluscs, worms, ascidians, etc. The fish that
specially characterise the sandy bottom are flat-fish, flounders. A
bottom consisting of loam mixed with fine sand and fragments of
shell is also called a halibut bottom.
At the top we have the littoral zone. It may also be called
the algæ zone, for it is the algæ, and especially the laminariæ,
that give to it its peculiar stamp. Any one desirous of studying
it must go out to the coast, to the sea, for there it attains its
highest degree of development. It is in this region that we find
the greatest number of southern European animal forms. On the
sea-weeds are numerous Nudibranchiata, such as Doris, Eolis,
Dendronotus, also various Echinodermata, such as Asterias,
Porania, Solaster, Ophiocoma, several species of ascidians, and both
simple and compound hydroids etc. Among the stones, or in the
cracks in the rocks, lobsters are hiding, the Norwegian lobster
(Nephrops) and various kinds of crabs, etc. On the sand we meet
with Mya, Pecten and several other bivalves, and on the rocks
Patella, Buccinum, Mytilus, Balanus, Alcyonium, etc. This region
is also inhabited by numerous kinds of fish, and is the haunt of
the small fry of most of our food-fish. In more land-locked waters,
creeks of brackish water in southern and western Norway, lives the
oyster, which in former times had a much wider distribution than
in our day. Some of these creeks, in which the temperature, on
account of peculiar physical conditions, sometimes rises to 70° or
80° Fahr., are first-rate breeding places for this mollusc.
Of land and fresh-water molluscs, 121 species are known in
Norway, most of which also occur in the rest of Northern Europe.
On account of the mild maritime climate, they are found farther
north in Norway than in the adjoining countries. The northern
limit of Limax maximus, for instance, in Norway, is 66° 49′,
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