An important part of the pelagic plankton consists of certain small mollusks; and "as regards abundance of individuals few groups of pelagic animals can compare with the winged snails, or Pteropoda." These are minute, rapidly swimming creatures with thin, glassy shells, and in some parts of the warmer oceans these discarded shells are so numerous on the bottom that they give the name pteropod ooze to the mud. One kind (Limacina), with a coiled shell about the size of a pinhead, which abounds in the north Atlantic, is much feared by the Norwegian fishermen because they very often spoil the herring that feed on them. Another kind (Clione), looking somewhat like a reddish butterfly an inch or so long, swims in shoals in the icy seas of the far North, and is known as "whales' food." Some larger mollusks, of which the beautiful purple Ianthina is most conspicuous, live among the vast patches of floating seaweed in the Sargasso Sea. Great numbers and variety of tunicates or ascidians and their larvæ are taken in the surface nets of the sea naturalists, among them the salpæ--free-swimming, barrel-shaped, transparent animals well known to all seafaring people, and often seen crowding the surface of the ocean. One genus of them is Pyrosoma, which has from the earliest days excited the interest of mankind, mainly on account of the strong phosphorescent light emitted, the name, indeed, meaning "fire animal." These salpæ aggregate into colonies often several yards in length which glow like fiery serpents as they move sinuously on their way. This property of luminosity, so widely possessed by marine animals, is one of the unsolved mysteries. It is called "phosphorescence," because it resembles the cold light given by phosphorus when undergoing slow oxidation, but phosphorus has nothing to do with the manifestation here, or in such insects as the firefly; nor is it owing to bacteria, as in the case of shining wood or decaying fish. What it really is no one knows, but it has, at least, been learned that in animals the power of emitting light is always attributable to certain structures of a glandular nature that secrete a slimy, luminous substance, or, rather, two substances, one luciferin and the other luciferase. When both together are exposed to seawater phosphorescent light results.