94 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 
régime of its own; the struggle for existence is 
intense; the life-saving adaptations and shifts for 
a living are endless; “ passions there, laws, pursuits, 
tribes,” as Walt Whitman said in his “ World below 
the Brine.” For it is to the region of the sea- 
meadows rather than to the deep sea, that most 
of that vivid picture applies: 
The World below the brine, 
Forests at the bottom of the sea—the branches and leaves, 
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds—the 
thick tangle, the openings, and the pink turf, 
Different colors, pale grey and green, purple, white, and 
gold—the play of light through the water, 
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks—coral, gluten, 
grass, rushes—and the aliment of the swimmers, 
Sluggish existences grazing there, suspended, or slowly 
crawling close to the bottom. 
This and more also will be subscribed to by all who 
have spent a summer afternoon drifting here and 
there over the sea-meadows, peering into the 
crowded life below, enjoying the play of color, 
lifting now and again a leaf of sea-grass—some- 
times 6 feet long—to discover how many small 
creatures were browsing there, or raising mare 
adventurously a stone from the bottom to see what 
is meant by an “ epifauna,”’ sometimes a dozen dif- 
ferent kinds of creatures living together in moving 
equilibrium. “ But what an endless task have I on 
hand to count the sea’s abundant progeny, whose 
fruitful seede farre passeth those on land ... so 
fertile be the flouds in generation, so huge their 
numbers, and so numberlesse their nation.” 
