CHAPTER lY. 



LIFE IN THE OCEAN. 



The appearance of the open sea/' says Fridol, 

 " far from the shore — the boundless ocean — 

 is to the man who loves to create a world 

 of his own, in which he can freely exercise 

 his thoughts, filled with sublime ideas of 

 the Infinite. His searching eye rests upon 

 the far distant horizon. He sees there the ocean and the 

 heavens, meeting in a vapory outline, where the stars ascend 

 and descend, appear and disappear in their turn. Presently 

 this everlasting change in Nature awakens in him a vague 

 feeling of that sadness, which, says Humboldt, ' lies at the 

 root of all our heartfelt joys.' '' 



Emotions of another kind are produced by the contem- 

 plation and study of the habits of the innumerable organized 

 beings which inhabit this great deep. In fact, that immense 

 expanse of water which we call the sea, is no vast liquid 

 desert; light dwells on its bosom as it does on that of dry 

 land. Here this mystery of life reigns supreme. It is 

 among the most beautiful, the most noble, and the most in- 

 comprehensible of His manifestations. Without life, the 

 world would be as nothing. All the beings endowed with it 

 transmit it faithfully to other beings, they, again, to their 

 successors, which will be, like them, the depositories of the 

 same mysterious gift ; the marvelous heritage thus traverses 

 years and hundreds of years without losing its powers ; the 

 globe is teeming with the life which has been so bounteous- 

 ly distributed over it. 



