130 REMINISCENCES OF 



MINUTE ANIMALS OF THE OCEAN. 



The innumerable tribes of insects which swarm in 

 every part of the world, delighting us by the brilliancy 

 of their colouring, or tormenting us with their attacks 

 upon our persons or our property, although their armies 

 sometimes render whole countries uninhabitable, destroy- 

 ing every blade of grass in their career ; even these seem- 

 ingly interminable hosts must yield the palm in number, 

 beauty, every thing except destructiveness, to the sky- 

 tinted denizens of the ocean. Every leaf of sea-weed, 

 every fragment of floating timber, teems with life in some 

 of its most interesting forms, and the blue expanse of 

 waves is every where studded with animated gems, which 

 sail along its surface or lie hidden in its bosom. 



The seaman, as the vessel hurries along, catches occa- 

 sional glimpses of misty specks floating beneath him, 

 which, to his careless eye, appear like the spawn of fishes, 

 or the slime washed from their bodies, yet in these un- 

 promising and neglected atoms, closer examination dis- 

 covers beings whose delicacy of structure defies the 

 pencil, and whose tints are rivalled only by those of a 

 summer's evening. 



It is much to be regretted that many minds capable of 

 enjoying, in the highest degree, those pleasures which 

 may be drawn from every department of natural history, 

 are arrested on the threshold of the study by the dry and 

 technical systems, which are but the common-place books 



