28 THE HAUNTS OF LIFE 



It is fairly safe to say that no seashore animal 

 ever says, what a man might say with a shark 

 after him : " I shall be eaten." It is certain 

 that none ever says : " I have been eaten." 

 There is grim truth in this saying about the 

 conjugation of the verb : To eat ; but the truth 

 is one-sided unless we remember that the 

 animals are also conjugating the verb : To love, 

 and often, also, the verb to conquer. " Love" 

 and " Hunger," both in inverted commas, are 

 the pivots on which all life swings. 



THE CIRCULATION OF MATTER 



Animate nature is run on what may be called 

 a scheme of successive incarnations. Matter is 

 always passing from one embodiment to another, 

 and nothing is ever lost. The minute plants 

 free in the water and the fixed seaweeds, great 

 and small, all feed on the sea itself and the air 

 which it holds in solution. They are bathed in 

 a nutritive solution of salts and gases, which 

 their living matter, with the help of the sun- 

 light, lifts on to the plane of life. In technical 

 language, they build up carbon-compounds by 

 photo-synthesis. 



But animals get their food from the plants, 



