OCEAN GAEDENS; 



connection with the waters of the ocean. And yet, 

 how few there are who seek that charming mode of 

 dissipating the dreary monotony of social life, such 

 as it is made by the routine of fashion or habit ! A 

 popular love of natural history, even in its best 

 known divisions, is, in fact, of quite recent growth. 

 Indeed, the very existence of such a science has been, 

 till recently, altogether ignored by our great national 

 seats of learning. The earnest investigators^ who 

 have done so much to lay bare its wonders, were 

 either openly ridiculed, or treated with but small 

 respect — as useless dreamers upon very small and 

 insignificant matters. The very names of such true 

 labourers in the mine of science as our glorious old 

 naturalist Ray, or his follower Pulteney, or the 

 indefatigable Ellis, the first detector of the true 

 nature of Zoophytes, who measured pens with the 

 giant Linnaeus, received no academic honour ; and 

 those of their undiscouraged successors have been 

 rarely heard, either in our universities or among 

 our general public, till the vast discoveries of geo- 

 logy and other allied branches of science, in our 

 own times, have at last aroused attention to their 

 importance. 



Any popular knowledge of that branch of natural 

 history which especially concerns our seas and 



6 



