THE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE. 101 



five times as long as the elephant, the giant of the firm 

 land. Turtles weighing a thousand pounds, are found in 

 more than one sea. The rocky islands of the southern 

 Arctic alone, furnish a yearly supply of a million of sea- 

 lions, sea-cows, and seals. Huge birds rise from the foam- 

 covered waves, their homes never seen by human eye, 

 their young ones bred in lands unknown to man. Islands 

 are formed, and mountains raised, by the mere dung of 

 generations of smaller birds. And yet nature is here also 

 greatest in her smallest creations. For how fine must, for 

 instance, be the texture of sinews and muscles, of nerves 

 and blood-vessels, in animals that never reach the size of 

 a pea, or even a pin's head ! 



The ocean has not only its mountains and plains, its 

 turf moors and sandy deserts, its rivers and sweet springs, 

 gushing forth from hidden recesses, and rising through the 

 midst of salt water, but it has also its lofty forests, with 

 luxuriant parasites, its vast prairies and blooming gardens ; 

 landscapes, in fine, far more gorgeous and glorious than 

 all the splendor of the firm land. It is true that but 

 two kinds of plants, algoe or fucus, prosper upon the 

 bottom of the sea, the one a jointed kind, having a 

 threadlike form, the other jointless, and comprising all 

 the species that grow in submarine forests, or float like 

 green meadows in the open sea. But their forms are so 

 varied, their colors so brilliant, their number and size so 

 enormous, that they change the deep into fabulous fairy 

 gardens. And, as branches and leaves of firm, earth-rooted 

 trees, tremble and bend on the elastic waves of the air, 

 or wrestle, sighing and groaning, with the tempest's fury, 



