THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



ward and the stamens gently oscillating as 

 though the whole had become butterflies. Over 

 the whole picture falls a blue light. The gla- 

 cier has stretched out its crystal hand, like a 

 sky blue disk it has spread out over this whole 

 enchanted world, as though to protect its Idyll 

 from the profane world. Only the golden sun 



ventures in 



We are again in the sea. What was there a 

 legend is here a reality. Above us rise one hun- 

 dred and eighty feet of blue ocean like a glass 

 disk. A tropical sun glows on it and heats the 

 flood to sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, a normal 

 green house temperature. Here also extends a 

 sloping declivity sown over with great isolated 

 rock blocks, all the rock lumps and ruggedness 

 covered by a rich colored flower meadow. Here 

 also Alpine rose, red, gentian blue, anemone 

 gold and emerald green weave a design with 

 each other. The wonder is realized, we are in 

 the garden of the ocean, in the coral garden, 

 and each of these flowers is in reality an animal. 

 They root firmly, plant like, on the ground and 

 stretch the little colored wings of their soft 

 bodies, like flower leaves upwards. The medu- 

 rae that in the blue above flutter like the but- 

 terflies of this garden are nothing but torn ofl' 

 blossoms of the garden itself. At one time they 

 grew as tiny cups, entirely similar to the true 

 coral, from the stem of a polyp or sprouted as 

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