Here is the stark struggle for survival with the mask of sunlight, green fields and flowers discarded. It is not different in kind but in degree from the struggle that goes on continually between living things at the surface of the ocean and on the land. Down there all must eat flesh. There is no plant life intermediary between beast and beast. Plants cannot grow below the light line of the sea depths. Out of this fierce war for existence have come creatures mostly conspicuous for their defensive and offensive equipment. Some of the fish seem to have become little more than enormous mouths with rows of long, razor-like teeth with which they seize and kill. The bodies attached to these mouths are small and slender. Such a creature is mostly head and the head is mostly mouth. Nearly all the fish carry light organs of some kind near the mouth with which other animals are probably attracted within grabbing distance. One of the largest collections of deep sea animals was assembled a few years ago near the Puerto Rico Deep, the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean, by a Smithsonian Institution expedition led by Dr. Paul Bartsch. This collection constituted a fair representation of the sea life at depths of about 3200 feet, nearly 2500 feet below the farthest reaches of the sun’s rays. There were shrimps with long, sharp claws which fold up after the fashion of an old-fashioned straight razor. Any small creature which came within striking distance of such a razor probably would be an immediate victim. There were strange mollusks with shells like corkscrews and eels like darning needles with long, sharp beaks. Among the most fantastic was the needle-fish. It jaws are prolonged into extraordinarily slender points, like fine needles, so that the head is nearly as long as the rest of the body—that is, about six inches. This fish was lured to the net by an electric light. A group of flat fish, or flounders, was obtained, all of which have two eyes on one side of the head and none on the other. Instead of right eye and left eye there is upper eye and lower eye. Other strange forms in the collection: The hunchback fish, a creature whose strangely shaped body suggests its name. The lance fish with long, backward-reaching spines suggestive of lances just behind the eyes. The forceps fish, one of the most aberrant of all with its greatly extended, forceps-like jaws. There is apparently but a single genus and species in existence. The family of snout fish with snouts almost as long as the rest of the body. At the end of the snout is a mouth.