2-2 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



clearness of the waters produced another deception of a most 

 agreeable kind. Leaning over the boat, we glided over plains, 

 dales, and hillocks, which, in some places naked and in others 

 carpeted with green or with brownish shrubbery, reminded us of 

 the prospects of the land. Our eye distinguished the smallest 

 inequalities of the piled-up rocks, plunged more than a hundred 

 feet deep into their cavernous hollows, and everywhere the 

 undulations of the sand, the abrupt edges of the stone-blocks, 

 and the tufts of algae were so sharply denned, that the wonder- 

 ful illusion made us forget the reality of the scene. Between us 

 and those lovely pictures we saw no more the intervening 

 waters that enveloped them as in an atmosphere and carried our 

 boat upon their bosom. It was as if we were hanging in a 

 vacant space, or looking down like birds hovering in the air 

 upon a charming prospect. Strangely formed animals peopled 

 these submarine regions, and lent them a peculiar character. 

 Fishes, sometimes isolated like the sparrows of our groves, or 

 uniting in flocks like our pigeons or swallows, roamed among 

 the crags, wandered through the thickets of the sea-plants, 

 and shot away like arrows as our boat passed over them. 

 Caryophyllias, Crorgonias, and a thousand other zoophytes 

 unfolded their sensitive petals, and could hardly be distinguished 

 from the real plants with whose fronds their branches intertwined. 

 Enormous dark blue Holothurias crept along upon the sandy 

 bottom, or slowly climbed the rocks, on which crimson sea-stars 

 spread out immoveably their long radiating arms. Molluscs 

 dragged themselves lazily along, while crabs, resembling huge 

 spiders, ran against them in their oblique and rapid progress, or 

 attacked them with their formidable claws. Other crustaceans, 

 analogous to our lobsters or shrimps, gambolled among the fuci, 

 sought for a moment the surface waters to enjoy the light of 

 heaven, and then by one mighty stroke of their muscular tail, 

 instantly disappeared again in the obscure recesses of the deep. 

 Among these animals whose shapes reminded us of familiar 

 forms appeared other species, belonging to types unknown in 

 our colder latitudes : Salpce, strange molluscs of glassy trans- 

 parency, that, linked together, form swimming chains; great 

 Beroes, similar to living enamel ; Diphyce hardly to be dis- 

 tinguished from the pure element in which they move, and 

 finally, Stephanomice, animated garlands woven of crystal and 



