60 HANDY BOOK OP 



dripping and sparkling with augmented beauty ; and around 

 it are a wild brotherhood of stones, covered with the deep- 

 green, oozy weed of ocean. 



Men speak of trials in this probationary state. Doubtless 

 there is much to call for sympathy and aid — and blessed are 

 those who sow beside the waters of affliction ; yet, still there 

 is a vast amount of happiness, concerning which few take 

 note. Think you not that marine insects which find their 

 homes on the broad leaves of that magnificent sea-plant are 

 unsusceptible of happiness ; that the bright beams of the 

 warm sun are not to them an additional source of enjoyment : 

 or that the overspreading of the waters, when they cover 

 again, as with a mantle, the plants among which such 

 insects dwell, does not produce a grateful and necessary 

 change ? The microscope has revealed much concerning the 

 haunts and habits of those small creatures which are assigned 

 to all land-plants ; and, doubtless, sea- weeds have each some 

 occupant which, equally with its terrestrial brethren, has an 

 allotted duty to fulfil in the economy of nature. 



The jagged rhodomenia offers another instance of pre- 

 scribed locality, for its place of growth is uniformly on 

 marine rocks or stones, or the strong stems of the laminarice, 

 but rarely within tide-mark. And, thus enlivening many a 

 sea-girt rock with its crimson tufts, it extends along our 

 shores, from the Orkneys to that extreme point in Cornwall, 

 the Land's-End, where the sternness of rock and flood con- 

 trasts with the repose and beauty of this bright plant, over 

 which the waves of a raging sea often rush with tremendous 

 fury. It is also aboriginal in Ireland and Jersey ; but its 

 wider range are the Atlantic shores of Europe, reaching 

 from Spain to Norway ; those of the Feroe Isles, and the 

 eastern coasts of South America, far south as the Delaware. 



Frequent on the shores of Britain, and the south and west 

 of Ireland, appears the hairy rhodomenia (R. ciliata), which, 

 unlike its brilliant relative, is of a dull and purplish red. 

 This plant, extending farther in its geographic range, 



