THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 63 
the surface, sucking in and driving ont again the 
salt water on which it feeds, till last night’s ground- 
swell shifted the sea-bottom, and drove them up 
hither to perish helpless, but not useless, on the 
beach. 
See, close by is another shell bed, quite as large, 
but comely enough to please any eye. What a 
variety of forms and colours are there, amid the 
purple and olive wreaths of wrack, and bladder- 
weed, and tangle (ore-weed, as they call it in the 
south), and the delicate green ribbons of the Zostera 
(the only English flowering plant which grows 
beneath the sea). What are they all? What are 
the long white razors? What are the delicate green- 
grey scimitars? What are the tapering brown 
spires? What the tufts of delicate yellow plants 
like squirrels’ tails, and lobsters’ horns, and tama- 
risks, and fir-trees, and all other finely cut animal 
and vegetable forms? What are the groups of grey 
bladders, with something like a little bud at the 
tip? What are the hundreds of little pink-striped 
pears? What those tiny babies’ heads, covered with 
