STARS OF THE SEA. 



have flowed ; and so sharply are these defined, where grow- 

 ing atolls and reefs abound, one may stand — as I have often 

 done upon those of the Florida reef — and drop a leaded line 

 almost directly to the bottom in the clear blue waters. 



This submarine scenery would not show the rough and 

 jagged outlines which are a characteristic of terrestrial 

 mountain ranges. Nearly all prominences in water at a con- 

 siderable depth are well rounded off by a coating of fine 

 ooze, formed of the minute and delicate shells of the gloheri- 

 gina, one of the lowest organized of animal life. These little 

 creatures live upon the bottom, or in the watery space above, 

 and the ooze which makes the sea-bottom, in great thickness, 

 is almost entirely made up of the dead and cast-off shells 

 of these microscopical creatures. The chalk cliff of Dover, 

 England, — that white headland which has given the ancient 

 name of Albion to the mother country, — is an upheaved mass 

 of the same material, once found in the' ocean bottom, now 

 elevated by some geological change, and hardened into chalk, 

 which it really is. What a surprising monument, erected 

 by Nature's processes from the myriads of bodies of her most 

 minute and most simply organized animals I 

 , The familiar modern term " protoplasm " represents what 

 is know to be the simplest form of life ; scarcely more, 

 seemingly, than a bit of jelly, without form, and we might 

 say void of organization, for it is alive, and yet has no nerves, 

 no organized vessels which we can perceive, but exists in our 

 pools as the least organized animal known. 



There is a species which belongs to one of the numerous 

 kinds or groups of this the first and least perfect of the 

 animal kingdom, which has also the great distinction of 

 being the best known and most brilliant of marine light- 



