138 HALF AN HOUR WITH SEA-MATS AND SQUIRTS. 



IX. 



HALF AN HOUR WITH SEA-MATS AND SQUIRTS. 



A TRUE naturalist can sympathise with the theories 

 of the early Greek philosophers, who taught that the 

 sea was the great menstruum of life, and its slime 

 the ultimate and original basis of life. Indeed, we 

 do not seem to have got far from this early theory, 

 for the modern doctrine of protoplasm carries it out 

 theoretically, and its application to the sarcodous 

 masses called Bafhybius, lying along the deeper 

 parts of the sea bottom, makes us admire all the 

 more the keen intellect of those old Greek guessers 

 of natural phenomena. But even if we were without 

 such evidence of the shrewdness of the hypothesis, 

 the abundance of life which peoples every drop of 

 sea- water would cause us to regard it as poetically 

 true. Life on the dry land is marvellously de- 

 veloped, especially plant life, in its many phases, 

 from the lichen to the oak. But we find in the sea 

 that a corresponding series of changes are rung in 

 the animal world. From the scarcely animated jelly 

 of the Bathylius, to the whale, thene is a wonder- 

 ful series of organic forms, living not only now, 

 but in the past ages of the earth's history, which 

 graduate into each other in the most marvellous 

 fashion. There is a scientific truth underlying 



