64 GLAUCUS; OE, 



swell shifted the sea-bottom, and drove them up 

 hither to perish helpless, but not useless, on the 

 beach. 



See, close by is another shell bed, quite as large, 

 but comely enough to please any eye. What a 

 variety of forms and colours are there, amid the 

 purple and olive wreaths of wrack, and bladder- 

 weed, and tangle (oar-weed, as they call it in the 

 south), and the delicate green ribbons of the Zostera 

 (the only English flowering plant which grows 

 beneath the sea), surely contradicting, as do several 

 other forms, that somewhat hasty assertion of Mr. 

 Euskin, that N'ature makes no ribbons, unless with 

 a midrib, and I know not what other limitations, 

 which seem to me to exist only in Mr. Euskin's 

 fertile, but fastidious fancy. What are they all? 

 What are the long white razors? Wliat are the 

 delicate green-grey scimitars ? What are the taper- 

 ing brown spires ? What the tufts of delicate yellow 

 plants, like squirrels' tails, and lobsters' horns, and 

 tamarisks, and fir-trees, and all other finely cut 

 animal and vegetable forms ? What are the groups 



