120 THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. 



Nor are the frozen regions of tlie earth more 

 agreeable to the algae than tliose which are too 

 highly heated. They disappear long before wo 

 cease to find traces of animal life. Flowers pre- 

 serve their brilliance under the snow, which pro- 

 tects them from the too intense cold ; but the 

 polar ice does not seem to perform a similar kind 

 office for marine plants. Life is extinguished at 

 the poles by sheer numbness, and these plants are 

 among the first of living things to resent that 

 effect. Eocks, sand, and mud are here only accidents 

 of the submarine landscape. Here we no longer 

 find the charming rural retreats (if the expression 

 be allowable) of the hippocampi, those quaint hybrids 

 of the creation : here are none of those republics of 

 stone built up through age succeeding age by 

 armies of insect workmen. Nature seems to have 

 reached the end of her resources. The beings con- 

 demned to these gloomy solitudes are not the 

 creatures of a single element, but pass their lives 

 alternately in the air and in the Avater. They are 

 like a link between the aerial and the submarine 

 worlds. The sea, covered with thick masses of ice, 

 supplies them with but little nourishment in winter. 

 During this season, therefore, they hunt such land 

 animals as chance may throw in their way; they 

 even prey upon one another, and we know how 



