Atmospheric agitations, thunder-bolts and hurricanes do not penetrate the water.

Only the cracking shell of certain crabs and the dolorous moaning near the surface of certain fishes, called snorers, alter this silence.
Since the ocean lacks acoustic waves, their inhabitants have never needed to form the organs that transform them into sound.

They feel impetuously the primal necessities of animal life,--hunger and love.
They suffer madly the cruelty of sickness and pain; among themselves they fight to the death for a meal or a mate.

But all in absolute silence, without the howl of triumph or agony with which terrestrial animals accompany the same manifestations of their existence.
Their principal sense is that of smell, as is that of sight in the bird.

In the twilight world of the ocean, streaked with phosphorescent and deceptive splendors, the big fish trust only to their sense of smell and at times to that of touch.
Sometimes buried in the mud, they will ascend hundreds of yards, attracted by the odor of the fish that are swimming on the surface.
This prodigious faculty renders useless, in part, the colors in which the timid species clothe themselves in order to confound themselves with lights or shadows.