294 THE UNKNOWN. 



the wonders of the enchanted night, the silver disc, six 

 feet across, of the moon-fish,* moves, slightly luminous, 

 among the crowd of little sparkling stars. 



" The most luxuriant vegetation of a tropical landscape 

 cannot unfold as great wealth of form, while in the variety 

 arid splendour of colour it would stand far behind this 

 garden landscape, which is strangely composed exclusively 

 of animals, and not of plants ; for, characteristic as the 

 luxuriant development of vegetation of the temperate 

 zones is of the sea-bottom, the fulness and multiplicity 

 of the marine Fauna is just as prominent in the regions 

 of the tropics. Whatever is beautiful, wondrous, or un- 

 common in the great classes of fish and echinoderms, 

 jelly-fishes and polypes, and the molluscs of all kinds, is 

 crowded into the warm and crystal waters of the tropical 

 ocean, rests in the white sands, clothes the rough cliffs, 

 clings where the room is already occupied, like a parasite, 

 upon the first comers, or swims through the shallows and 

 depths of the element while the mass of the vegetation 

 is of a far inferior magnitude. It is peculiar in relation 

 to this, that the law valid on land, according to which 

 the animal kingdom, being better adapted to accommodate 

 itself to outward circumstances, has a greater diffusion 

 than the vegetable kingdom ; for the Polar Seas swarm 

 with whales, seals, sea-birds, fishes, and countless numbers 

 of the lower animals, even where every trace of vegetation 

 has long vanished in the eternally frozen ice, and the cool 

 sea fosters no sea-weed ; that this law, I say, holds good 



* Orlhagoriscus mola. 



