THE OCEAN. 303 



taken from a distant ship by the compass, precisely as that 

 of a high mountain or a solitary peak. 



Although the surface of the ocean is less rich in animal 

 and vegetable forms than that of continents, yet when its 

 depths ate searched, perhaps no other portion of our planet 

 presents such fulness of organic life. Charles Darwin, in 

 the agreeable journal of his extensive voyages, justly remarks, 

 that our land forests do not harbour so many animals as the 

 low wooded regions of the ocean, where the sea- weed rooted 

 to the shonls, or long branches of fuci detached by the force of 

 waves and currents, and swimming free upborne by air-cells, 

 unfold their delicate foliage. The application of the micros- 

 cope still farther increases our impression of the profusion 

 of organic life which pervades the recesses of the ocean, since 

 throughout its mass we find animal existence, and at depths 

 exceeding the height of our loftiest mountain chains, the 

 strata of water are alive with polygastric worms, cyclidise, 

 and ophrydinse. Here swarm countless hosts of minute 

 luminiferous animals, mammaria, Crustacea, peridinea, and 

 ciliated nereides, which, when attracted to the surface by 

 particular conditions of weather, convert every wave into 

 a crest of light. The abundance of these minute crea- 

 tures, and of the animal matter supplied by their rapid 

 decomposition, is such, that the sea water itself becomes 

 a nutritious fluid to many of the larger inhabitants of the 

 ocean. 



If all this richness and variety of animal life, containing 

 some highly organised and beautiful forms, is well fitted to 

 afford not only an interesting study, but also a pleasing ex- 

 citement to the fancy, the imagination is yet more deeply, 

 I might say more solemnly, moved by the impressions of th 

 boundless and immeasurable which every sea-voyage affords. 



VOL. I. Y 



