This word of recent scientific invention presented to Captain Ferragut's mind the most humble and interesting of the oceanic inhabitants.

The _plancton_ is the life that floats in loose clusters or forming cloud-like groups across the neritic surface, even descending to the abyssal depths.
Wherever the _plancton_ goes, there is living animation, grouping itself in closely packed colonies.

The purest and most translucent salt water shows under certain luminous rays a multitude of little bodies as restless as the dust motes that dance in shafts of sunlight.

These transparent beings mingled with microscopic algae and embryonic mucosities are the _plancton_.

In its dense mass, scarcely visible to the human eye, float the _siphonoforas_, garlands of entities united by a transparent thread as fragile, delicate and luminous as Bohemian crystal.