THE DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN. 293 



(Colours of the rainbow, but marked by no definite outline, appearing 

 and disappearing, intercrossing, joining company and parting again , 

 in most fantastic ways ; and all this in the most rapid change, and 

 jamid the most wonderful play of light and shade, altered by every 

 breath of wind, and every slight curling of the surface of the ocean. 

 When day declines, and the shades of night lay hold upon the 

 •deep, this fantastic garden is lighted up in new splendour. Millions 

 -of glowing sparks, little microscopic medusas and crustaceans, 

 dance hke glow-worms through the gloom. The sea-feather, which 

 by daylight is vermilion-coloured, waves in a greenish, phospho- 

 rescent light. Every corner of it is lustrous. Parts which by day 

 were perhaps dull and brown, and retreated from the sight amid 

 .the universal brilliancy of colour, are now radiant in the most 

 wonderful play of green, yellow, and red light ; and, to complete 

 the wonders of the enchanted night, the silver disk, six feet across, 

 of the moon fish,* moves, slightly luminous, among the cloud ot 

 Jittle sparkling stars. The most luxmiant vegetation of a tropical 

 landscape cannot unfold as great wealth of form, while in the 

 yariety and splendour of colour it would stand far behind this 

 gardeir landscape, which is strangely composed exclusively of 

 animals, and not of plants ; for, characteristic as the luxuriant 

 development of vegetation of the temperate zones is of the sea 

 bottom, the fullness and multiphcity of the marine Fauna is just as 

 prominent in the regions of the tropics. Whatever is beautiful, 

 wondrous, or uncommon in the great classes of fish and Echino- 

 derms, jelly-fishes and Polypes, and the Mollusks of all kinds, 

 is crowded into the warm and crystal waters of the tropical ocean — 

 rests in the white sands, clothes the rough clifi's, clings, where the 

 room is already occupied, like a parasite, upon the first comers, or 

 swims through the shallows and depths of the elements — while the 

 mass of the vegetation is of a far inferior magnitude. It is peculiar 

 in relation to this that the law valid on land, according to which 

 the animal kingdom, being better adapted to accommodate itself to 

 outward ch'cumstances, has a greater diffusion than the vegetable 

 kingdom — for the polar seas swarm with whales, seals, sea-birds, 

 fishes, and countless numbers of the lower animals, even where 

 every trace of vegetation has long vanished in the eternally frozen 

 ice, and the cooled sea fosters no sea-weed — that this law, I say, 

 holds good also for the sea, in the direction of its depth ; for when 

 we descend, vegetable life vanishes much sooner than the animal, 



* Ortbagoriscus mola. 



