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There were sea shrubs and sea trees, that blossom, not with 

 flowers, but with living polypi innumerable. There was the 

 moss-coralline, the bell-coralline, sea-threads, sea-paps, dead" 

 man's hands, and a host of things of which those who have not 

 gone a-dredging have no conception! The singular sea-plants 

 called nullipores were also brought up abundantly; how the 

 functions of vegetable life can be carried on by these sea- 

 weeds, that so soon incrust themselves with limestone, is hard 

 to understand ; but so it is : and these strange plants, doubt- 

 less, serve some useful purpose in Nature's varied economy. 



This is but a very brief and imperfect account of the host of living 

 things that we found brought forth abundantly in the waters of our 

 bay. But how describe the odd medley of things that the dredge 

 scrapes up from the bottom ! If we drew up prizes, so we at the 

 same time gathered old rotting weeds, whose odour was anything 

 but inviting, with zoophyte populations that had served their day 

 and generation, and were fast hastening to decay and corruption. 

 Masses of dead and empty shells there were, too, that far exceeded 

 the living ones. The universal law of death prevails as inexorably 

 in ocean depths as it does in the upper world ; and we have yet 

 to find, and never will find, the creature that is exempt from 

 " Nature's stern decree." 



The poet has sung of the " sunless wrecks " that strew the sea 

 bottom. We found these sunless wrecks in Belfast Bay rather a 

 queer lot, and not at all provocative of romantic sentiment — an 

 ancient boot, the rim of a hat, damaged tinware, black old tobacco 

 pipes, and broken bottles most abundant of all, with fragments of 

 delf, and, as our captain said, ruefully — everything but money. 

 Down in the submarine depths, there is no exception to the 

 general rule : there is beauty and repulsiveness ; weakness and 

 strength ; pain and pleasure ; life and death. The active, energetic 

 creature of life may shelter beneath a mass of death and corruption, 

 and the ugly and deformed old shell often forms the resting-place 

 to which are attached creatures of most exquisite construction. 

 As night came on, we devoted ourselves to arranging and stowing 

 away our multitudinous specimens, and, as usual on such occasions, 



