136 THE SEA. 



hind, to tell that a living form had recently tenanted 

 that vacuity of clear water. 



Not as on the land, where the charm of variety is 

 chiefly given to the landscape by the vegetation, the 

 luxuriant apparel of the submarine prospect is mainly 

 dependent on the profusion, the gaiety, and the ele- 

 gance of the animal life ; and this particularly in the 

 warmer seas. Characteristic as is the luxuriant 

 development of vegetable life of the sea-floor in the 

 temperate zones, the fulness and multiplicity of the 

 marine Fauna is just as prominent in the intertropical 

 and subtropical regions. Whatever is beautiful, 'won- 

 drous, or strange in the great and populous tribes of 

 fishes, mollusks, crustaceans, stars, jellies, and polypes, 

 is crowded into the tepid and glowing seas of the 

 tropics, rests on the smooth white sands, clothes the 

 rough cliffs, clings, even when the space is before 

 occupied, parasitically to the tenants already in occu- 

 pation, or swims through the free depths and warm 

 shallows ; while the vegetation holds a very subordi- 

 nate rank, both as to variety of form and species, and 

 also as to abundance of individuals. It has been 

 recognised as a law in the upper world, that animal 

 life, being better adapted to accommodate itself to 

 outward circumstances, is more universally diffused 

 than vegetable life, or at least can survive the priva- 

 tion of conditions ordinarily essential to vitality, longer 

 than vegetation ; and hence we find the sub-polar seas 

 swarming with whales, seals, birds, fishes, and im- 

 mense multitudes of invertebrate animals, when every 



