18 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



and veins of mica. No part exhibits the slightest 

 trace of the pudding-stone and rose granite of 

 Jersey, or of the schist, trap, or quartz rocks so 

 common at St. Malo. The rock of Chausey does 

 not, either, resemble that of Granville ; hence every- 

 thing disposes us to regard this district as being 

 merely indirectly connected with the neighbouring 

 formations. 



During high tide, an observer standing on Gros 

 Mont sees only fifteen islands around him, and 

 these are almost on a level with the surrounding 

 liquid plain. One by one some isolated rock de- 

 taches itself from the green bed of the ocean, and 

 arrests the waves as they break in white foam against 

 its blackened summit. But soon the tide is seen to 

 ebb; the sea, after some oscillation, begins to fall. 

 The islands gradually become larger, girding them- 

 selves with a broad belt of moss-covered and black- 

 ened rocks, festooned by long pendants of brown 

 fucus, which hang from their sides like the marble 

 reeds with which sculptors adorn their statues of 

 river gods. Numerous rocks, covered with the same 

 vegetation, seem to emerge on every side and rapidly 

 multiplying, end by mingling together into one 

 mass. At length, long banks of yellow sands come 

 to view, vast prairies of the zostera* rise from be- 

 neath the waves, and, uniting the points which had 

 before been severed, convert the archipelago into 



* Zostera constitutes a genus of marine plants which grow sub- 

 merged in almost all seas, being usually found near the coast ; the 

 species to which we here refer (Z. marina) is remarkable for the 

 length of its leaves, which look like long, narrow, and thin green 

 ribbons. 



