THE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE. 1 1 1 



rooted mosses, each branching off into a thousand finely 

 traced leaves. On this soft couch the luxuriant sea-lettuce 

 spreads its broad, elegant leaves, a rich pasture for peaceful 

 snails, and sluggish turtles. Between them shine the gi- 

 gantic leaves of the irides in brilliant scarlet or delicate 

 pink, whilst along reef and cliff the dark olive-green fuel 

 hang in rich festoons, and half cover the magnificent sea- 

 rose in its unsurpassed beauty. Like tall trees the lami- 

 naria spread about, waving in endless broad ribbons along 

 the currents, and rising high above the dense crowd. 

 Alaria send up their long naked stems, which at last ex- 

 pand into a huge, unsightly leaf of more than fifty feet in 

 length. But the sea-forest boasts of still loftier trees, for 

 the nereocysti rise to a height of seventy feet ; beginning 

 with a coral-shaped root, they grow up in a thin, thread- 

 like trunk, which gradually thickens, until its club-shaped 

 form grows into an enormous bladder, from the top of 

 which, like a crest on a gigantic helmet, there waves 

 proudly a large bunch of delicate but immense leaves. 

 These are the palms of the ocean, and these forests grow, 

 as by magic, in a few months, cover the bottom of the 

 sea with a most luxuriant growth, and then wither and 

 vanish, only to reappear soon again in greater richness 

 and splendor. And what crowds of strange, ill-shapen, 

 and unheard of mollusks, fish, and shellfish move among 

 them ! Here they are huge balls, there many cornered 

 or starlike, then again long streaming ribbons. Some are 

 armed with large, prominent teeth, others with sharp saws, 

 whilst a few, when pursued, make themselves invisible by 

 emitting a dark vapor-like fluid. Here, glassy, colorless 



