3 2 4 Life in the Open 



into a fish, marvellous in its resemblance to the leaves 

 among which it lives. The mimic is a foot in length, 

 of a delicate green, tending to yellow, the exact tint of 

 the kelp, even the paler whitish spots being simulated ; 

 not only this, but the kelp-fish poises in the hanging 

 gardens either on its head or tail, or partly recumbent, 

 so that it has assumed the exact position of the leaves 

 it so closely imitates. It is long, slender, with a high 

 fin extending its entire length ; a pointed mouth, and 

 eyes having the strange faculty of following one around, 

 after the fashion of the eyes of old portraits. 



The window drifts past a slug-like animal lying on 

 painted rocks, the Mche de mer of the Chinese, in which 

 lives the strange glass-like fish fierasfer. Here is a 

 colony of mimic flowers, serpulse, with crowns of red, 

 blue, and seeming gold. The lightest jar on the boat 

 and they are gone, to appear slowly unfolding like 

 flowers. Near them are other tube-building worms, with 

 similar organs ; and out from beneath a richly-coloured 

 rock wave the " whips " of the spiny lobster or crawfish 

 a lobster in all but the large claws. 



The animals of the hanging gardens are not con- 

 fined to the kelp or to the rocks of the bottom. The 

 blue water where the sunlight enters brings out myri- 

 ads of delicate forms, poising, drifting, swimming, the 

 veritable gems of the sea. Some are red as the ruby ; 

 others blue like sapphire ; some yellow, white, brown, or 

 emitting vivid flashes of seeming phosphorescent light. 

 Ocean sapphires they are called ; the true gems of the 



