no resemblance to the surface of the sea, but sug- 

 gest the bottom of the deep — limpid, dark and 

 still. Each is a world by itself, inhabited by a 

 strange order of beings : dull nomads, which drift 

 with the waves, or cling, they know not how, to 

 something, they know not what. If there is any 

 event in their life it is the rise of the tide. In all 

 likelihood they do not know our day and night, 

 are not impressed by these phenomena; but the 

 flood is their day, the^ ebb their night. Small 

 whelk stud the rich background of sea-mosses like 

 precious stones, some gamboge, some orange, others 

 white as marble or banded with black. There are 

 colonies of sertularia tinted a delicate mauve, soli- 

 tary sea-urchins of heliotrope, and starfish, some 

 luminous pink, others deep rose-madder. These 

 hues are charadteristic of sea life, as of lichens and 

 mushrooms and the lower orders in general; not 

 crude colors, red and blue, but delicate gradations. 

 Now and again a single jellyfish, stranded by the 

 receding tide, a spedtral diaphanous creature, 

 hovers ghostlike in the liquid atmosphere of his 

 strange world. It is all of an antediluvian and 

 prehistoric character, associated with the beginning 

 of things — with an age of fishes rather than an 

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