k 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



the mouth. They appear Hke a tale from the 

 primitive world. They formed sub-marine for- 

 ests in the Jura period when the ocean with us 

 yet reached to Swabia; in our German states 

 their stems lie, their far branching feather-like 

 crowns transformed to stone alongside the Ic- 

 thyosaurius. Here beneath the deep sea where 

 storms never come to roughly touch the fragile 

 lime discs and the bewitchingly bold and intri- 

 cate pattern of twigs and branches they have 

 found a last asylum and here they wave their 

 palm arms in the pale light of the shining fishes 

 like a vision of a world that ten million years 

 ago existed in the blue light on the surface of 

 the planet. 



Wherever this animal forest is open to view 

 there appear strange stiff crooked forms, hoary 

 dwarfs all bearded and then turned into stone. 

 The lime appears to have overcome them. Their 

 beards are covered with snow-white crystals; 

 their feet have been transformed into crystal 

 needles that have bored three feet into the oozy 

 bed. They also live. They are glass sponges 

 whose structure of finest filagree work is spun 

 with foamy thinness from silica, — glass whose 

 fragility is only possible in the stormless depths 

 and that is so gloriously worked out that when 

 the first specimens were seen they were thought 

 to be examples of the most delicate master- 

 pieces of Japanase glass work. 

 29 



