OR, GLIMPSES BENEATH THE WATERS. 



oubliette^ with so much grace, and looking so mnch 

 like those shrinking flowers that close at eve, as 

 though they dared not to look on the black darkness 

 of the night, that it is no wonder poets were be- 

 guiled, and that the romantic Southey sings of the 

 Actinia as of some lily of the deep that, on the 

 retiring of the ocean, 



Sinks down within its purple stem to sleep." 



To add to the wonders of this strange landscape 

 come the creeping Nitdih^anchs and TectibrancJis^ 

 gliding oyer the gracefnlly-waying Algce; their ele« 

 gant forms decorated with their external breathing 

 apparatus, like the pale skeleton of some delicate 

 flower, so fine are its milk-w^hite filaments, arranged 

 nearly always in a symmetrical and star-like form. 

 And then there are the singular and shadowy Jf^c^f/^^e 

 floating past, in the form of parachutes, with low sus- 

 pended cars, just as though the science of ballooning 

 had been carried to perfection under the sea; and 

 that they were made of elastic glass, instead of silk, 

 though richly flushed with iridescent and varying 

 tinges, sometimes metallic azure, and anon emerald 

 green; hues that seem added by some delicate process 

 which the glass-blowers above the water have not yet 

 discovered. Some of these creatures are fragile as a 



15 



