172 CONCHOLOGIST’S COMPANION. 
of rocks, several hundred feet in height, which seem 
to have been laid one upon another in an oblique 
direction, or start in bold projecting masses from the 
bosom of the ocean; rocks which appear, as high as 
they are washed by the tide, to be covered with the 
most beautiful grey moss or lichens, but are in fact 
incrusted with innumerable families of little Limpets, 
which they shelter and protect like foster parents 
during the recess of the tide. But these are not the 
only objects deserving the attention of the naturalist. 
The excavations formed by the toiling of the waves, 
apparently encircle diminutive groves and gardens, 
formed of crimson, green, brown, and pink-coloured 
sea-weeds, and occasionally diversified with strings of 
beads, which fancy pictures, as the work of invisible 
fingers, for the decoration of fairy-sized sea nymphs. 
Some are in the perfect form of minute trees; others 
trail like ribbons, floating and trembling in the 
waves, or simply expanded by the motion of the 
tide. Of these, a considerable number are either 
incrusted with minute shells that shine like silver; or 
else afford shelter to innumerable little fishes, ‘‘ their 
coats bedropt with gold,’ and varied with tints of 
azure, green, and purple. For the supreme Creator 
of the universe, as if wishing to communicate some 
scattered rays of his glory, and his blessedness, to 
this extended world, has replenished every leaf, and 
