22 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 
clearness of the waters produced another deception of a most 
agreeable kind. Leaning over the boat, we glided over plains, 
dales, and hillocks, which, in some places naked and in others 
carpeted with green or with brownish shrubbery, reminded us of 
the prospects of the land. Our eye distinguished the smallest 
inequalities of the piled-up rocks, plunged more than a hundred 
feet deep into their cavernous hollows, and everywhere the 
undulations of the sand, the abrupt edges of the stone-blocks, 
and the tufts of alga were so sharply defined, that the wonder- 
ful illusion made us forget the reality of thescene. Between us 
and those lovely pictures we saw no more the intervening 
waters that enveloped them as in an atmosphere and carried our 
boat upon their bosom. It was as if we were hanging in a 
vacant space, or looking down like birds hovering in the air 
upon a charming prospect. Strangely formed animals peopled 
these submarine regions, and lent them a peculiar character. 
Fishes, sometimes isolated like the sparrows of our groves, or 
uniting in flocks like our pigeons or swallows, roamed among 
the crags, wandered through the thickets of the sea-plants, 
and shot away like arrows as our boat passed over them. 
Caryophyilias, Gorgonias, and a thousand other zoophytes 
unfolded their sensitive petals, and could hardly be distinguished 
from the real plants with whose fronds their branches intertwined. 
Enormous dark blue Holothurias crept along upon the sandy 
bottom, or slowly climbed the rocks, on which crimson sea-stars 
spread out immoveably their long radiating arms. Molluscs 
dragged themselves lazily along, while crabs, resembling huge 
spiders, ran against them in their oblique and rapid progress, or 
attacked them with their formidable claws. Other crustaceans, 
analogous to our lobsters or shrimps, gambolled among the fuci, 
songht for a moment the surface waters to enjoy the light of 
heaven, and then by one mighty stroke of their muscular tail, 
instantly disappeared again in the obscure recesses of the deep. 
Among these animals whose shapes reminded us of familiar 
forms appeared other species, belonging to types unknown in 
our colder latitudes: Salpe, strange molluses of glassy trans- 
parency, that, linked together, form swimming chains; great 
Beroés, similar to living enamel; Diphye hardly to be dis- 
tinguished from the pure element in which they move, and 
finally, Stephanomic, animated garlands woven of crystal and 
