130 CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER 



In times past the marine garden comprised several 

 acres in which were plants of almost every conceivable 

 shape and form, and more or less bright and delicate in 

 colour. Fancy may feign shrubs, standard and clipped ; 

 elaborate bouquets, bunches of grapes, compact cauliflowers, 

 frail red fans. Rounded, skull-like protuberances with the 

 convolutions of the brain exposed, stag-horns, whip-thongs 

 yards long, masses of pink and white resembling fanciful 

 confectionery, intricate lace-work in the deepest indigo 

 blue, have their appointed places. Some of the spreading 

 plant-like growths are snow-white, tipped with mauve, 

 lemon-coloured tipped with white, white tipped with lemon 

 and pale blue. 



On the rocks rest stalkless mushrooms, gills upper- 

 most, which blossom as pom-pom chrysanthemums ; rough 

 nodules, boat- and canoe-shaped dishes of coral. Adhering 

 to the rocks are thin, flaky, brittle growths resembling vine- 

 leaves, brown and golden-yellow ; goblets and cups, tiered 

 epergnes, distorted saucers, eccentric vases, crazily-shaped 

 dishes. Clams and cowries and other molluscs people the 

 cracks and crevices of coral blocks, and congregate beneath 

 detached masses and loose stones. In these fervid and 

 fecund waters life is real, life is earnest. Here, are elabor- 

 ately armoured crayfish (Palinurus ornatus], upon which 

 the most gaudy colours are lavished ; grotesque crabs, fish 

 brilliant in hue as humming-birds. Life, darting and dash- 

 ing, active and alert, crawling and slithering, slow and 

 stationary, swarms in these marine groves. 



A coral reef is gorged with a population of varied 

 elements viciously disposed towards each other. It is one 

 of Nature's most cruel battlefields, for it is the brood of the 

 sea that "plots mutual slaughter, hungering to live." 

 Molluscs are murderers and the most shameless of 

 cannibals. No creature at all conspicuous is safe, unless it 

 is agile and alert, or of horrific aspect, or endowed with 

 giant's strength, or is encased in armour. A perfectly 

 inoffensive crab, incapable of inflicting injury to anything 

 save creatures of almost microscopic dimensions, assumes 



