130 W. K. BROOKS. 



the " sea-gardens " at the inner end of a channel, through which 

 the pure water from the open sea flows between two coral islands, 

 into the lagoon. Here the true reef corals grow in quiet water 

 where they may be visited and examined. 



The bottom of the boat is below the surface ripples and reflec- 

 tions. When illuminated by the vertical sun of the tropics, and 

 by the light which is reflected back from the white bottom, the 

 pure transparent ocean water is as clear as air, and the smallest 

 object, forty or fifty feet down, is seen distinctly. 



As the boat glides over the great mushroom-shaped coral domes 

 which arch up from the depths, the dark grottoes between them, 

 and the caves under their overhanging tops, are lighted u]^ by the 

 sun far down among the flower -animals or anthozoa and the 

 animal plants or zoophytes which are seen through the waving 

 thickets of brown and purple sea fans and sea feathers as they toss 

 before the swell from the ocean. 



There are miles of these "sea-gardens" in the lagoons of the 

 Bahamas, and it has been my good fortune to spend many months 

 studying their wonders, but no description can convey any con- 

 ception of their beauty and luxuriance, and I never spent a day 

 among the reefs without longing, at every turn, for the skill to 

 copy with a brush the new beauties which never ceased to pre- 

 sent themselves. 



The general effect is very garden-like, and the beautiful fishes 

 of black and golden yellow and iridescent cobalt blue hover like 

 birds among the thickets of yellow and lilac gorgonias. The 

 parrot fishes (Diodon and Ballistes) seem to be cropping the 

 plants like rabbits, but more careful examination shows that they 

 are biting off the tips of the gorgonias and branching madrepores, 

 or hunting for the small Crustacea which hide in the thicket, and 

 that all the apparent plants are really animals. The delicate star- 

 like flowers are the vermilion heads of boring annelids, or the 

 scarlet tentacles of actinias, and the thicket is made up of pale 

 lavender bushes of branching madrepores and green and yellow 

 and olive masses of brain coral, of alcyonarians of all shades of 

 yellow and lilac and purple and red, and of red and brown and 

 black sponges. Even the lichens which incrust the rocks are 

 hydroid corals, and the whole sea-garden is a dense jungle of 



