112 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OP NATURE. 



eyes stare at you with dull, imbecile light there, deep 

 blue or black eyes glare with almost human sense and 

 unmistakable cunning. Through bush and through thicket 

 there glide the hosts of fierce, gluttonous robbers who fill 

 the vast deep. But not only the animals of the ocean 

 pasture and hunt there ; man also stretches out his covetous 

 hand and demands his share. 



Proud ships with swelling sails disdain not to arrest 

 their bird-like flight, to carry off vast fucus forests which 

 they have torn up from the bottom of the sea, in order 

 to manufacture kelp or iodine from the ashes, or to fish 

 at the peril of their lives for bright corals in the depth. 

 In the streets of Edinburgh the cry of " buy pepper-dulse 

 and tangle" is heard in our day, and the Irish fisherman 

 boldly faces death to snatch a load of Carraghen-moss 

 from the rapid current. The poor peasant of Normandy 

 gathers the vast heaps of decaying fuci, which wind and 

 wave have driven to his shore, in order to carry them 

 painfully, miles and miles, as manure to his fields, and 

 the so-called sheep-fucus supports the flocks and herds of 

 cattle in many a northern island in Scotland and in Nor- 

 way, through their long, dreary winters. The men of 

 Iceland and of Greenland diligently grind some farinaceous 

 kind of fucus into flour, and subsist, with their cattle, upon 

 this strange food for many months, whilst their wives 

 follow Paris fashion, and rouge themselves with the red 

 flower of the purple fucus. 



Here, however, one of the great mysteries which the 

 ocean suggests, often startles the thinking observer. For 

 whom did the Almighty create all this wealth of beauty 



