14 
ANIMAL LIFE ON THE 
A long, unbroken wave rolls in upon the shore, and breaks 
with a peculiar murmur in the shingle at our feet. Quicker 
and quicker they come; the wind breathes, then puffs, and 
freshens into strength, and far out the advancing waves are 
jumb ing and tossing their uplifted hea^s into snowy foam. 
Onward they come, in the might of their terrible grandeur, 
surging and raging ; they rush upon the land, and burst with 
the roar of deafening thunder along the sounding shore. 
The wind shrieks and moans, and yonder at the headlands, 
the angry sea swishes and dashes against the iron-bound 
cliffs, and returns again and again to the charge, till the 
foam of its awful wrath is sputtered over the dizzy heights 
and borne far inland on the wings of the howling storm. 
A MARINE CANNIBALISTIC WAR. 
But the wrath of the tempest is appeased, and the calm 
of the sea has come again. Out upon the glassy surface, 
about sixty yards or so from where we stand, a flock of sea- 
gulls flutter and scream and dash down upon the sea, 
and, from the numerous little splashings and breakings of 
the calm, an agitation of some sort seems to be going on 
amongst the finny tribes of the deep. Let us cautiously 
push out our little bark and ascertain. As we drift quietly 
out, over the gunwale of the shady side we recline, and in 
the clear blue water between us and the white sandy bottom 
we note the frequent darting here and there of fish of a 
considerable size. Gradually they increase in numbers, till 
we arrive at a dark object stretching six feet from the 
surface to a depth of about fifteen feet in five fathoms of 
water. On closer inspection we find this object to be a 
complete column, about six feet in diameter, stretching to 
the depth already mentioned, composed of a compact body 
of little fishes between two and three inches in length. 
OS) 
