A Window of the Sea 321 



angel fish of vivid golden yellow, a tint that persists in 

 taking black through the camera. A school of these 

 fishes swims into view, turning their gorgeous shapes 

 upward and eying the strange window in which are 

 mirrored many faces. With them are smaller ones of a 

 vivid blue iridescence, suggesting the strange vagaries 

 of nature, as the very young are almost entirely blue, 

 and called by our skipper " electric fishes." But as 

 they grow the blue merges into orange, and the adult 

 fish blooms out in its perfect coat of gold. 



On the leaves are seen singular crabs, red and olive, 

 with square shells, and deeper in the crevices of the 

 moss-covered rock are gigantic spider crabs a foot 

 across, mimicking the rocks in shape and colour. The 

 nature of the forest is ever changing. Now great pom- 

 pons of a rich dark weed appear, in splendid tints, 

 born of the deep sea. It waves gracefully as the slight 

 swell comes in, and as it turns aside displays the very 

 giant of the star-fishes, a huge creature garbed in red, 

 with white spikes or tubercles scattered over it, a most 

 conspicuous object among the greens. The star-fish is 

 twelve inches across, and slowly moves along by the 

 aid of its myriad feet. In the crevices are smaller stars ; 

 some a vivid red, others dark, with arms like snakes. 



The bottom changes now to a finer moss or weed, a 

 deep velvet green here or there, changing to iridescent 

 tints ; and in it lie big, slug-like, brick-red sea-cucum- 

 bers ; and then presto ! the captain of the glass-bottom 

 boat transports us to a deep glen in which lacelike plants 



