146 TOILERS IN THE SEA. 



rocks, more than a hundred feet below us, amid 

 submarine precipices, along which the undulating 

 sands, the sharply cut angles of the stone, and the 

 rich tufts of brightly-coloured red weeds, and glossy 

 fucus fronds, lay revealed to sight with such incre- 

 dible preciseness and clearness, as completely to 

 deprive us of the power of separating the real from 

 the ideal. After gazing intently for a while at the 

 picturesque scene beneath our eyes, we scarcely 

 perceived the intervening liquid element which 

 served for its atmosphere, and bore us on its clear 

 surface. We seemed to be suspended in empty 

 space, or, rather, realising one of those dreams in 

 which the imagination often indulges, we appeared 

 to be soaring like a bird, and to contemplate from 

 some aerial height the thousand varied features of 

 hill and dale." Amongst the things to be seen were 

 " a hundred different kinds of Polyzoaries, bloom- 

 ing in tufts of living flowers, or ramified into little 

 shrubs, every spur and bud of which was an animal, 

 and which, by their interlacing stems, their variegated 

 branches and budding shoots, can scarcely be dis- 

 tinguished from true vegetables." l 



Few of us have been privileged to see these 

 " Plant-animals " flourishing in their native element, 



1 "Rambles of a Naturalist," &c., by A. de Quatrefages. 

 (English edition.) Vol. i. p. 175. London, 1857. 



