260 ZOOPHYTES. 



jects of our shores ; though several of them are 

 well known to our fishermen, and also to the in- 

 habitants of sea-side towns, from being frequently 

 brought up in the dredge. It is in this division 

 that we find those beautiful sea-fans which most 

 of us have seen among the curiosities brought 

 home from the tropical seas, and which, looking 

 to us like so many stony sprays of sea-weed, yet 

 convey little idea of their beauty in their native 

 haunts. Waving about, under the emerald- 

 green waters, like willow-trees before the wave, 

 bending in most graceful attitudes, and coloured 

 with brilliant hues of violet and purple, and paler 

 blue, they may well attract the young voyager 

 who stoops over the side of the vessel to look down 

 into the deep ; and we wonder not that he hastens 

 to the coral reef, where they are waving, and re- 

 turns with bleeding feet from their sharp ridges, 

 rich with the spoils of the sea. Cuvier, in his 

 " Theory of the Earth," describes the beauty of 

 these lithophyta, which abound in the seas of the 

 tropics, and are propagated with great rapidity, 

 their tree -like forms being variously interwoven, 

 and often forming frightful snares for navigators. 

 We have four British species of these Sea-fans 

 (Gorgonia}, and one of them is common on the 

 Devonshire coast ; but they are far inferior in 

 beauty of colour, as well as in size, to the natives 

 of warmer latitudes. Our fishermen may well 

 call them sea-shrubs, for few would look upon 

 them without deeming them some plant, encrusted 

 with lime. The sea-fan branches out into a com- 

 plete network, the whole mass of which is or- 

 ganized and living, and receives its food and 

 means of increase from the food abounding in 



