28 THE HAUNTS OF LIFE 



It is fairly safe to say that no seashore animal 

 ever says, what a man might say with a shark 

 after him : " I shall be eaten." It is certain that 

 none ever says: " I have been eaten." There is 

 grim truth in this saying about the conjuga- 

 tion of the verb: To eat; but the truth is one- 

 sided unless we remember that the animals 

 are also conjugating the verb: To love, and 

 often, also, the verb to conquer. " Love " and 

 " Hunger," both in inverted commas, are the 

 pivots on which all life swings. 



THE CIRCULATION OF MATTER 



Animate nature is run on what may be 

 called a scheme of successive incarnations. 

 Matter is always passing from one embodi- 

 ment to another, and nothing is ever lost. The 

 minute plants free in the water and the fixed 

 seaweeds, great and small, all feed on the sea 

 itself and the air which it holds in solution. 

 They are bathed in a nutritive solution of salts 

 and gases, which their living matter, with the 

 help of the sunlight, lifts on to the plane of 

 life. In technical language, they build up 

 carbon-compounds by photo-synthesis. 



But animals get their food from the plants, 



