60 THE OCEAN WORLD. 



CHAPTEE III. 



LIFE IN THE OCEAN. 



" See what a lovely shell, small and pure as a pearl, 

 Frail, but a work divine, made so fairly well, 

 With delicate spore and whorl, a miracle of design." TENNYSOX. 



" THE appearance of the open sea," says Fredol, from whose elegant 

 work this chapter is chiefly compiled, "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 

 vapoury outline, where the stars ascend and descend, appear and dis- 

 appear in their turn. Presently this everlasting change in nature 

 awakens in him a vague feeling of that sadness ' which,' says Hurn- 

 boldt, ' lies at the root of all our heartfelt joys.' " 



Emotions of another kind and equally serious are produced by the 

 contemplation and study of the habits of the innumerable organized 

 beings which inhabit the great deep. In fact, that immense expanse of 

 water, which we call the sea, is no vast liquid desert ; life dwells in 

 its bosom as it does on dry land. Here this mystery reigns supreme 

 in the midst of its expansions, luxuries, and agitations. It pleases the 

 Creator. It is the most beautiful, the most brilliant, the noblest, and 

 the most incomprehensible of His manifestations. Without life, the 

 world would be as nothing. The beings endowed with it transmit it 

 faithfully to other beings, their children, and their successors, which 

 will be, like them, the depositaries of the same mysterious gift ; the 

 marvellous heritage thus traverses years and hundreds of years without 

 losing its powers ; the globe is redolent with the life which has been 



