THE AVONDEUS OF THE SHORE. 0/ 



large, but comely enough to please any eye. 

 "What a variety of forms and colors are there, 

 amid the purple and olive wreaths of wrack, and 

 bladder-weed, and tangle, (oar-weed, as they call 

 it in the south.) and the delicate green ribbons 

 of the Zostcra, (the only English flowering plant 

 which grows beneath the sea,) surely contra- 

 dicting, as do several other forms, that some- 

 what hasty assertion of Mr. Ruskin, that nature 

 makes no ribbons, unless with a midrib, and I 

 know not what other limitations, which seem to 

 me to exist only in Mr. Ruskin's fertile, but 

 fastidious fancy. "What are they all ? What are 

 the long white razors ? What are the delicate 

 green-gray scymitars ? What arc the tapering 

 brown spires ? What the tufts of delicate yellow 

 plant*!, like squirrels' tails, and lobsters' horns, 

 and tamarisks, and fir-trees, and all other finely 

 I'ut animal and vegetable forms ? AVhat are the 

 groups of gray bladders, witli something like a 

 little bud at the tip ? What are the hundreds 

 of little pink-striped pears ? What those tiny 

 babies' heads, covered with gray i)rickles instead 

 of hair? 'Ilic great red star-fish, which Ulster 

 children call " the bad man's hands " ; and the 

 great whelks, which the youth of IMusselburgh 



