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CHAPTER 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 spire and whorl, 

 A miracle of design." 



TENNYSON. 



" THE appearance of the open sea," says Fre'dol, from whose 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 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 contemplation 

 and study of the habits of the innumerable organised beings which 

 inhabit this 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 that of the dry land. Here this mystery of life 

 reigns supreme. It is among the most beautiful, the most noble, and 

 the most incomprehensible 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 depositaries of the same mysterious gift ; the 

 marvellous heritage thus traverses years and hundreds of years without 

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

 so bounteously distributed over it. 



In every living being there are two powers, between which a 



