THE UNKNOWN. 



it is lustrous. Parts which by day were dull and 

 brown, and retreated from the sight amid the 

 universal brilliancy of colour, are now radiant in 

 the most wonderful play of green, yellow, and red 

 light; and to complete the wonders of the en- 

 chanted 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 and splendour of colour it 

 would stand far behind this garden landscape, 

 which is strangely composed exclusively of ani- 

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

 luxuriant development of vegetation of the tem- 

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

 multiplicity of the marine Fauna is just as promi- 

 nent in the regions of the tropics. Whatever is 

 beautiful, wondrous, or uncommon 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 

 clitfs, 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 in- 

 ferior 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 king- 

 dom;— for the Polar Seas swarm with whales, 

 seals, sea-birds, fishes, and countless numbers of 

 the lower animals, even where every trace of vege- 

 tation has long vanished in the eternally frozen 

 * Ortltagoriscus mola. 

 277 



