26 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF 



gles, we see animals of every possible tint sporting 

 among their foliage, darting from frond to frond, 

 prowling among their gnarled roots, or crawling with 

 slimy trail along their polished bronzy expansions. 



To the laminarian succeeds the coralline zone, 

 wherein the horny plant-like polypidoms of hydroid 

 zoophytes delight to rear their graceful feathery 

 branches, whose flowers are animals rivalling plants 

 in symmetry and beauty. This region has a wide ex- 

 tension, well on to some thirty fathoms or more in 

 most places, commencing at the termination of the 

 zone of sea-weeds, especially at that portion of the 

 latter where the coral-like nullipores, vegetables 

 simulating minerals in figure and consistence, abound 

 and furnish a ground well fitted for the spawning 

 of fishes. Here we have great assemblages of ma- 

 rine animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate, but 

 plants are " few and far between." Last and lowest 

 of our regions of submarine existence is that of 

 deep-sea corals, so named on account of the great- 

 stony zoophytes characteristic of it in the oceanic 

 seas of Europe. In its depths the number of pecu- 

 liar creatures is few, yet sufficient to give a marked 

 character to it; whilst the other portions of its 

 population are derived from the higher zones, and 

 must be regarded as colonists. As we descend 

 deeper and deeper in this region its inhabitants be- 

 come more and more modified, and fewer and fewer, 

 indicating our approach towards an abyss where life 

 is either extinguished, or exhibits but a few sparks to 



