Ship Blown Ashore.-The Indians-John Coleman.— PAGE 265 DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. CHAPTER I. GREENLAND. ▲ CONNECTING LINK BETWEEN THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW. THE great connecting link between the old world and the new, not only in respect to the transmission of plants and animals, but also for man, has always been found in the cold and barren but still magnificent promontory of Greenland. This promontory insinuates itself like a wedge between the island of Iceland, the Feroe Islands, and the coast of Norway, on the one side, and the American shores on the other, and in connection with them forms a series of stepping-stones, or rather of stations, by means of which countless thousands of bears, seals, walruses, foxes, dogs, and other Arctic mammals, and countless millions of gulls, geese, auks, and other far-flying aquatic birds, some through the water, others through the air, and others upon vast fields of ice, either fixed or moving, have been continually passing to and fro. There are scarcely arry coasts in the world more teeming with animal life than these sterile and ice-bound shores. THE MEDUSAE. .Almost all these animals are beasts and birds of prey, and they derive their sustenance mainly om t sea-the land furnishing very scanty means of supporting life. The ultimate source from which the food of all the Arctic animals comes, and which from its abundance is the cause of the extreme prolificness of life in all those regions, is derived from the vast numbers of medusae with which the seas in those latitudes are filled. The medusae are jelly fishes. There is a very large class of these animals, known to naturalists by the name of Acalephae. This is a Greek word, meaning nettles. This name is given to the class from the fact that some of the species have the power of producing a stinging sensation on being touched in the water, or held in the hand. These stinging species are common upon our coasts, and the boys often encounter them in bathing. They call them sea-nettles, sting-galls, and by other |