MAEINE BOTANY. 



CHAPTER X. 



The land has its flowers: they adorn our gardens; they 

 exhale their fragrance on the skirts of the woods ; they defy 

 the winds, which blow around the lofty mountain-tops ; 

 they hide themselves in rifts of the rock, or spring up amid 

 ruins ; wherever a plant can take root, Flora makes her 

 appearance with her splendid gifts. 



But ocean, too, has its radiated flowers — its asters and 

 pinks — and far more wondrous than those of terra Jirma ; 

 for, being gifted with animal life, they can open and close 

 at will. In* our seas, the Sea Anemones (Actinia) princi- 



SEA ANEMONE. 



pally display all the glories of the rainbow on the submarine 

 plains'; but between the tropics, the gregarious reef-forming 

 Corals cover the ocean-bed with a gay carpet. 



The glorious picture whieh the Astreae and Mseandrines 

 unfold on the bed of the Red Sea, aroused in Ehrenberg the 

 greatest admiration, so that he exclaimed enthusiastically, 

 " Where is the flowery paradise which, in variety and 

 beauty, can rival these living wonders of the ocean ?" 



