LIFE UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
It is not intended in these notes, as the title might lead one to expect, to make any reference to the difficulties which we experience in camping during the long polar night in this latitude of somewhere between 77° and 78° south. Attention is invited rather to some of our very humble fellow-creatures, animals quite microscopic in size, which are able to live under conditions which seem to us extremely unfavourable.
Some of these deserve our interest as being, in the absence of Penguins and Skuas, the only land animals at present living in this region, perhaps the only living things besides ourselves on the whole Antarctic Continent.
The instances of Life under Difficulties are all selected from the class of the Rotifers. The animals of this class, though so small, are comparatively very highly organised and sensitive, yet they share with the simplest animals, (the Protozoa) the power of
