Oceanic Life — "Portuguese Mc7i-of-War." 109 



The nearer the tropics are approached the more does ocean 

 teem with animated orgasms. A net cast into it was im- 

 mediately filled with an immense number of little living 

 creatures. Pretty-looking blue cockles, sea-nettles, and various 

 other inhabitants of the deep, all of the most minute size, 

 lay rolled up in one lump with small sea-weeds of beautiful 

 forms and tints, from which those tiny things endeavoured, with 

 great exertion, to extricate themselves. The microscope dis- 

 closes to the observer an entirely new world in the economy of 

 nature, as displayed in the animal life of the surface of the sea. 

 The entire oceanic creation, from the smallest infusoria to the 

 huge whale, are all specially adapted to the element in which 

 they exist, and organized to contribute to the preservation, as 

 well as the further development, of the whole globe. 



This is beautifully illustrated by the operations of the 

 zoophytes ; the water of rivers dissolves the chalky substances 

 of the land and carries them down to the ocean, — immense 

 numbers of these form, for themselves, habitations from this 

 matter ; — by successive accumulation, produced through the 

 action or the dead bodies of these creatures, the ground is 

 raised gradually into the reefs, banks, and rocks, so dangerous 

 to navigation ; or into islands inhabited by man, who, in the 

 development of his moral and physical powers, performs his 

 mission in his high position, just as definitely as the imper- 

 ceptible animalculse do in their narrow sphere. 



Exceedingly beautiful in the tropic seas are those small 

 pJit/saliy a species of AcalephcB, known to sailors as " Portuguese 



