FORESTS OF THE SEA. 



51 



by veritable forests of the sea. The white 

 mangrove affected the unflooded ground ; the 

 red species (Ehizophora Mangle, Linn.) rose un- 

 supported where solidly based, but on the watery 

 edge it was propped, like a Banyan tree in 

 miniature, by succulent offsets of luscious purple 

 and emerald green, so intricate that the eye 

 would vainly unravel the web of root and trunk, 

 of branch and shoot. Hence, doubtless, the 

 name Aparaturie, or Apariturier, of the old 

 Prench travellers, from parere, because the tree 

 reproduces itself like mankind before split into 

 Adam and Eve. Clusters of parasitical oysters 

 adhered edgeways to the portions denuded by 

 the receding tide; the pirate-crab sat in his 

 plundered shell, whilst the brown newt and 

 rainbow-tinted cancers, each with solitary claw, 

 plunged into their little hiding-holes, or coursed 

 sidling amongst the harrow-work of roots, and 

 the green tufted upshoots binding the black 

 mass of ooze. These are the 'verdant and 

 superb, though unfruitful, trees' of the old 

 Portuguese navigator, which supply the well- 

 known ' Zanzibar rafters.' Various lichens sat 

 upon the branch forks, and tie-tie, or llianas, 

 hung like torn rigging from the boughs. Here 

 and there towered a nodding cocoa, an armed 



