120 BOOK OF NATURE LAID OPEN. 



the storms of affliction, shall overtake us. At God's 

 word, either to punish us or to prove us, from some 

 quarter or another, whence perhaps we least ex- 

 pected it, the wind ariseth and lifteth up the waves. 

 We are carried sometimes up to heaven with hope, 

 sometimes down to the deep with despair." 



CHAP. XL 



SEA PLANTS. 



c( With wonder mark the moving wilderness of waves, 

 Magnificently dreadful ! Where at large 

 Leviathan, (with each inferior name 

 Of sea horn kinds, ten thousand, thousand tribes,) 

 Finds endless range for pasture and for sport." 



THE bottom of the sea, as we have observed, 

 abounds with a variety of vegetable productions. 

 Before turning our attention more immediately to the 

 animated inhabitants of the great abyss, we shall, 

 therefore, take a cursory glance at these sub-marine 

 gardens, woods, and meadows ; and the first thing 

 that strikes our attention, is the remarkable differ- 

 ence in the conformation of Sea and Land Ve- 

 getables; for although they agree in possessing 

 t>he concomitant parts of roots, stalks, and branches, 

 yet it must be immediately observed, that instead of 

 being hard and brittle like the latter, the largest and 

 strongest of the former are furnished with an extra- 

 ordinary degree of tenacity, yet evince a power of 



