THC AV0NDER3 OF THE SHORE. 109 



surface, we should probably obtain some twenty 

 minute species more. 



A goodly catalogue this, surely, of the inhab- 

 itants of three or four large stones ; and yet 

 how small a specimen of the multitudinous na- 

 tions of the sea. From the bare rocks above 

 high-water mark, down to abysses deeper than 

 ever plummet sounded, is life, everywhere life; 

 fauna after fauna, and flora after flora, arranged 

 in zones, according to the amount of light and 

 warmth Avhich each species requires, and to the 

 amount of pressure which they arc able to en- 

 dure. The crevices of the highest rocks, only 

 sprinkled with salt spray in spring-tides and high 

 gales, have their peculiar little univalves, their 

 crisp lichen-like sea-weeds, in myriads ; lower 

 down, the region of the Fuel (Ijladder-weeds) has 

 its own tribes of periwinkles and limpets ; below 

 again, about tlic neap-tide mark, the region of the 

 corallines and Alf/fr furnishes food for yet other 

 species who graze on its watery meadows ; and 

 beneath nil, only uncovered at low spring-tide, the 

 zone of the Lnmiimrun (the great tangles and 

 oar-wccds) is most full of all of every imaginable 

 form of life. So that as we descend the rocks, 

 we may compare ourselves (likening small things 



