120 THE AQUARIAN NATURALIST. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



SERTULARIAN ZOOPHYTES. 



FEW amongst our lady readers but have amused 

 themselves during the leisure hours of their visits to 

 the sea-side in collecting upon the shore, selected 

 from among the thousand elegances which, known 

 by the general name of sea- weeds, strew the beach in 

 rich profusion, those branching, horny corallines, 

 whose slender stems and spreading plumes, arranged 

 after various graceful patterns, at once attract the 

 eye and extort expressions of delight from lips best 

 adapted to criticise what is beautiful in creation 

 (PL II. fig. 4). 



Occasionally we are indulged with a sight of simi- 

 lar delicate arborescences spread out on cards, and 

 grouped in tasteful combinations, or, more favoured 

 still, enshrined in albums, with an appended poetical 

 appeal to our feelings (quite irresistible in our case) 



to 



"Call them not weeds, but flowers of the sea." 



Admirable certainly are these pretty objects, thus 

 embalmed by roseate fingers, even in the dried and 

 shriveled state in which they are thus presented to our 

 notice, but infinitely more worthy of our admiration 



