filmy red algæ, interspersed with sea Anemones, -white, creamy, pink, yellow, purple, with a coronet of blue beads, and of many mixed colors; Sponges, Corallines, Starfish, Limpets, Barnacles, and other shell-fish; feathery Zoophytes and Annelides expand their pink or white disks, while here and there a Crab scuttles across; little Fish or Shrimps timidly come out from crevices in the rocks, or from among the fronds of the sea-weeds, or hastily dart from shelter to shelter; each little pool is, in fact, a miniature ocean in itself, and the longer one looks the more and more one will

see.

The dark green and brown sea - weeds do not live beyond a few-say about 15fathoms in depth. Below them occur delicate scarlet species, with Corallines and a different set of shells, Sea - urchins, etc. Plants rapidly diminish in number as the water deepens, and cannot live at great depths, but fish and other animals occur even in the abysses of the ocean.

To appreciate fully the extreme loveliness of marine animals they must be seen alive.

"A tuft of Sertularia, laden with white, or brilliantly tinted Polypites," says Hincks, "like blossoms on some tropical tree, is a perfect marvel of beauty. The unfolding of a mass of Plumularia, taken from amongst the miscellaneous contents of the dredge, and thrown into a bottle of clear sea-water, is a sight which, once seen, no dredger will forget. tree of Campanularia, when each one of its thousand transparent calycles-itself a study of form-is crowned by a circlet of beaded arms, drooping over its margin like the petals of a flower, offers a rare combination of the elements of beauty.

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The rocky wall of some deep tidal pool, thickly studded with the long and slender stems of Tubularia, surmounted by the bright rose-coloured heads, is like the gay parterre of a garden. Equally beautiful is the dense growth of Campanularia, covering (as I have seen it in Plymouth Sound) large tracts of the rock, its delicate shoots swaying to and fro with each movement of the water, like trees in a storm, or the colony of Obelia on the waving frond of the tangle looking almost

ethereal in its grace, transparency, and delicacy, as seen against the coarse dark surface that supports it."

It is indeed beautiful to look down from a boat into transparent water. At the bottom wave graceful seaweeds, brown, green, or rose-colored, and of most varied forms; on them and on the sands or rocks rest starfishes, mollusca, crustaceans, Sea-anemones, and innumerable other animals of strange forms and varied colors; in the clear water float or dart about endless creatures; true fishes, many of them brilliantly colored; Cuttlefishes like bad dreams; Lobsters and Crabs with graceful, transparent Shrimps; Worms swimming about like living ribbons, some with thousands of colored eyes, and Medusæ like living glass of the richest and softest hues, or glittering in the sunshine with all the colors of the rainbow.

On calm, cool nights I have often stood on the deck of a ship watching with wonder and awe the stars overhead, and the sea - fire below, especially in the foaming,

silvery wake of the vessel, where often suddenly appear globes of soft and lambent light, given out perhaps from the surface of some large Medusa.

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A beautiful white cloud of foam," says Coleridge, "at momently intervals coursed by the side of the vessel with a roar, and little stars of flame danced and sparkled and went out in it; and every now and then light detachments of this white cloud-like foam darted off from the vessel's side, each with its own small constellation, over the sea, and scoured out of sight like a Tartar troop over a wilderness."

Fish also are sometimes luminous. The Sun-fish has been seen to glow like a whitehot cannon-ball, and in one species of Shark (Squalus fulgens) the whole surface sometimes gives out a greenish lurid light, which makes it a most ghastly object. like some great ravenous spectre.

THE OCEAN DEPTHS

The Land bears a rich harvest of life, but only at the surface. The Ocean, on the contrary, though more richly peopled in its upper layers, which swarm with such innumerable multitudes of living creatures that they are, so to say, almost themselves alive - teems throughout with living beings.

The deepest abysses have a fauna of their own, which makes up for the comparative scantiness of its numbers, by the peculiarity and interest, of their forms and organisation. The middle waters are the home of various Fishes, Medusæ, and animalcules, while the upper layers swarm with an inexhaustible variety of living creatures.

It used to be supposed that the depths of the Ocean were destitute of animal life, but recent researches, and especially those made during our great national expedition in the "Challenger," have shown that this is not the case, but that the Ocean depths have a