ern Asia on the other, and the low but immensely broad tidal wave is pressed together and rises upwards, racing rapidly round the sharp point of Africa. An hour after the moon has risen highest at Greenwich, it reaches Fez and Morocco; two hours later it passes through the Straits of Gibraltar, and along the coast of Portugal. The fourth hour sees it rush with increased force into the Channel and past the western coast of England. There the rocky cliffs of Ireland and the numerous islands of the Northern seas arrest its rapid course, so that it reaches Norway only after an eight hours' headlong race. Another branch of the same wave hurries along the eastern coast of America in almost furious haste, often amounting to 120 miles an hour; from thence it passes on to the north, where, hemmed in on all sides, it rises here and there to the enormous height of eighty feet. Such is not rarely the case in the Bay of Fundy-a circumstance which shows us forcibly the vast superiority of this silent, steady movement over that of the fiercest tempest. Even at that most stormy and most dreaded spot on earth, Cape Horn, all the violence of raging tempests cannot raise the waves higher than some thirty feet, nor does it ever disturb the habitual calm of the ocean deeper than a few fathoms, so that divers do not hesitate to stay below, even when the hurricane rages above. Gentle in its appearance, though grand in its effect, this mighty wave shows its true power only when it meets obstacles worthy of such effort. Where strong currents oppose its approach, as in the river Dordogne, in France, it races in contemptuous haste up the daring stream and reaches there, for instance, in two minutes, the height of lofty houses. Or it rolls the mighty waters of the Amazon River mountain high up into huge dark masses of foaming cascades, and then drives them steadily, resistlessly upwards, leaving the calin of a mirror behind, and sending its roar and its thunder for miles into the upland.

Still less known and less observed is the third great movement which interrupts the apparent calm and peace of the ocean. For here, as everywhere, movement is life, as rest would be death. Without this-ever stirring activity in its own bosom, without this constant moving and intermingling of its waters, the countless myriads of

decaying plants and animals which are daily buried in the vast deep, would soon destroy, by their mephitic vapors, all life upon earth. This, greatest of all movements, never resting, never ending, is the effect of the sun and the warmth it generates. Like all bodies, water also contracts, and consequently grows heavier as the temperature sinks; but only to a certain point, about three degress Reaumur. This is the invariable warmth of the ocean at a depth of 3,600 feet, and below that. If the temperature is cooler, water becomes thinner again and lighter, so that at the freezing point, as ice, it weighs considerably less than when fluid. The consequence of this peculiar relation of water to warmth produces the remarkable result, that in the great ocean an incessant movement continues: up to the above mentioned degree of warmth, the warmer and lighter water rises continually, whilst the cooler and heavier sinks in like manner; below that point the colder water rises and the warmer part descends to the bottom. Hence, the many currents in the vast mass of the ocean; sometimes icy cold, at other times warm, and even hot, so that often the difference between the temperature of the current and that of the quiet water by its side, is quite astonishing. The great Humboldt found at Truxillo, the undisturbed waters as warm as 22 degrees, whilst the stream on the Peruvian coast had but little more than 8 degrees, and the sailor who paddles his boat with tolerable accuracy on the outer line of the gulf-stream, may dip his left into cold and his right into warm water.

Greater wonders still are hidden under the calm, still surface of the slumbering giant. Thoughtless and careless, man passes in his light fragile boat, over the boundless expanse of the ocean, and little does he know, as yet, of the vast plains beneath him, the luxuriant forests, the sweet, green meadows, that lie stretched out at the foot of unmeasured mountains, which raise their lofty peaks up to his ship's bottom, and the fiery volcanoes that earthquakes have thrown up below the waves.

For the sea, also, has its hills and its dales; its table-lands and its valleys; sometimes barren, and sometimes covered with luxuriant vegetation. Beneath its placid, even surface, there are inequalities far greater than the most startling on the continents of the earth. In the

Atlantic, south of St. Helena, the lead of the French frigate Venus, reached bottom only at a depth of 14,556 feet, or a distance equal to the height of Mount Blanc; and Captain Ross, during his last expedition to the South Pole, found, at 27,600 feet, a depth equal to more than five miles, no bottom yet: so that there the Dawalaghiri might have been placed on top of Mount Sinai, without appearing above the waters! And yet, from the same depth, mountains rise in cliffs and reefs, or expand upwards, in broad, fertile islands.

Nor can we any longer sustain the ancient faith in the stability of the "terra firma," as contrasted with the everchanging nature of the sea. Recent discoveries have proved that the land changes, and the waters are stable! The ocean maintains always the same level; but, as on the great continents, tablelands rise and prairies sink, so does the bottom of the sea rise and fall. In the South Sea this takes place alternately, at stated times. To such sinking portions of our earth belongs, among others, New Holland. So far from being a new, young land, it is, on the contrary, with its strange flora, so unlike that of the rest of the world, and its odd and marvellous animals, an aged, dying island, which the ocean is slowly burying, inch by inch.

And a wondrous world, is the world of the great sea. There are deep abysses, filled with huge rocks, spectral ruins of large ships, and the corpses of men. There lie, half covered with lime and slime, the green, decaying gun, and the precious box, filled with the gold of Peru's snow-covered Alps, by the side of countless skeletons, gathered from every shore and every clime. There moulders the bald skull of the brave sea captain, by the side of the broken armor of gigantic turtles; the whaler's harpoon rests peaceably near the tooth of the whale; thousands of fishes dwell in huge bales of costly silks from India, and over them pass, in silent crowds, myriads of diminutive infusoria; enormous whales, and voracious sharks, chasing before them thickly packed shoals of frightened herrings. Here, the sea foams and frets restlessly up curiously-shaped cliffs, and oddly-formed rocks; there, it moves sluggishly over large plains of white, shining sand. In the morning, the tidal waves break in grim fury against the bald peaks of submarine Alps, or pass, in hissing streams, through ancient forests

on their side; in the evening, they glide noiselessly over bottomless abysses, as if afraid, lest they, also, might sink down into the eternal night below, from which rises distant thunder; and the locked up waters roar and whine like evil spirits chained in the vast deep.

The ocean is a vast charnel house. There are millions and millions of animals mouldering, piled up, layer upon layer, in huge masses, or forming milelong banks. For no peace is found below and under the thin, transparent veil; there reigns endless murder, wild warfare, and fierce bloodshed. Infinite, unquenchable hatred seems to dwell in the cold, unfeeling deep. Destruction alone, maintains life in the boundless world of the ocean. Lions, tigers and wolves, reach a gigantic size in its vast caverns, and, day after day, destroy whole generations of smaller animals. Polypi and medusa, in countless numbers, spread their nets, catching the thoughtless radiati by tens of thousands, and the hage whale swallows, at one gulp, millions of minute, but living creatures. The swordfish and the sea-lion hunt the elephant and rhinoceros of the Pacific, and tiny parasites dart upon the tunny fish, to dwell in myriads in his thick layers of fat. All are hunting, killing, murdering; but the strife is silent, no war-cry is heard, no burst of anguish disturbs the eternal silence, no shouts of triumph rise up through the crystal waves to the world of light. The battles are fought in deep, still secresy; only now and then the parting waves disclose the bloody scene for an instant, or the dying whale throws his enormous carcass high into the air, driving the water up in lofty columns, capped with foam, and tinged with blood.

Ceaseless as that warfare is, it does not leave the ocean's depths a waste, a scene of desolation. On the contrary, we find that the sea, the most varied and the most wonderful part of creation, where nature still keeps some of her profoundest secrets, teems with life. "Things innumerable, both great and small, are there." It contains, especially, a most diversified and exuberant abundance of animal life, from the microscopic infusoria, in inconceivable numbers, up to those colossal forms which, free from the incumbrance of weight, are left free to exert the whole of their giant power for their enjoyment. Where the rocky cliffs of Spitzbergen and the inhospitable shores of Victoria land refuse to nourish

even the simplest, humblest lichen, where no reindeer is ever seen, and even the polar bear finds no longer comfort, there the sea is still covered with fuci and confervæ, and myriads of minute animals crowd its life-sustaining waves. Naturally, the purest springwater is not more limpid than the water of the ocean; for it absorbs all colors save that of ultramarine, which gives it the azure hue vying with the blue of heaven. It varies, to be sure, with every gleam of sunshine, with every passing cloud, and when shallow, it reflects the color of its bed. But its brightest tints, and strangest colors, are derived from infusoria and plants. In the Arctic Sea, a broad band of opaque olive green, passes right through the pure ultramarine; and off the Arabian coast, we are told, there is a strip of green water so distinctly marked, that a ship has been seen in blue and green water at the same time. The Vermillion Sea of California, has its naine from the red color of vast quantities of infusoria, and the Red Sea of Arabia changes from delicate pink to deep scarlet, as its tiny inhabitants move in thicker or thinner layers. Other masses of minute creatures tinge the waters round the Maldives black, and that of the Gulf of Guinea, white.

When Captain Ross, in the Arctic Sea, explored the bottom of the sea, and dropped his lead to a depth of 6,000 feet, he still brought up living animalculæ ; and, even at a depth exceeding the height of our loftiest mountains, the water is alive with countless hosts of diminutive, phosphoric creatures, which, when attracted to the surface, convert every wave into a crest of light, and the wide ocean into a sea of fire. It is well known that the abundance of these minute beings, and of the animal matter supplied by their rapid decomposition, is such, that the sea water itself becomes a nutritious fluid to many of the largest dwellers in the ocean. Still, they all have their own homes, even their own means of locomotion. They are not bound to certain regions of that great country below the ocean's waters. They travel far and fast; currents, unknown to man, carry them, in vast masses, from the Pole to the Equator, and often from Pole to Pole, so that the whale must travel, with locomotive speed, to follow the medusæ of the Arctic to the seas of the Antilles, if he will not dispense with his daily food. How strange a chase! The giant of the seas racing in furious

haste after hardly visible, faintly colored, jelly-balls!

But, for othe: purposes, also, there is incessant travel going on in the ocean's hidden realm. Water is the true and proper element of motion. Hence, we find here the most rapid journeys, the most constant changes from zone to zone. No class of animals travel so much and so regularly as fish, and nowhere, in the vast household of nature, do we see so clearly the close relation between the wants of man, and the provision made for them by a bountiful providence. The first herrings that appeared in the waters of Holland, used to be paid for by their weight in gold, and a Japanese nobleman spent more than a thousand ducats for a brace of common fish, when it pleased his Japanese majesty to order a fish dinner at his house in the depth of winter, when all fish leave the coasts of his country.

Now singly, now in shoals, fish are constantly seen moving through the ocean. The delicate mackerel travels towards the south, the small, elegant sardine, of the Mediterranean, moves in spring westward, and returns in fall to the east. The sturgeon of northern seas, sails lonely up the large rivers of the continent of Europe, and has been found in the very heart of Germany, under the shadow of the famous cathedral of Strasburg. Triangular masses of salmon press up nearly all northern rivers, and are sometimes so numerous, so closely packed, that they actually impede the current of large rivers. Before their arrival, countless millions of herrings leave the same waters, but where their home is, man has not yet found out. Only in the spring months there suddenly appear vast banks of this remarkable fish, two or three miles wide, and twenty to thirty miles long, and so dense are the crowds, so great their depth, that lances and harpoons, even the sounding lead-thrown at random amongst them, do not sink, but remain standing upright. What numbers are devoured by sharks and birds of prey, is not known; what immense quantities are caught along the coast, to be spread as manure on the fields inland, is beyond all calculation; and yet, it has been ascertained that over a thousand millions alone, are annually salted for winter consumption!

Alike gigantic is the life of the ocean in its dimensions. Whales of a hundred feet length and more, are the largest of all animals on earth, five times as long as

the elephant, the giant of the firm land. Turtles weighing a thousand pounds, are found in more than one sea. The rocky islands of the southern Arctic alone, furnish a yearly supply of a million of sea-lions, sea-cows, and seals. Huge birds rise from the foam-covered waves, their homes never seen by human eye, their young ones bred in lands unknown to man. Islands are formed, and mountains raised, by the mere dung of generations of smaller birds. And yet nature is here also greatest in her smallest creations. For how fine must, for instance, be the texture of sinews and muscles, of nerves and blood-vessels, in animals that never reach the size of a pea, or even a pin's head!

The ocean has not only its mountains and plains, its turf moors and sandy deserts, its rivers and sweet springs, gushing forth from hidden recesses, and rising through the midst of salt water, but it has also its lofty forests, with luxuriant parasites, its vast prairies and blooming gardens; landscapes, in fine, far more gorgeous and glorious than all the splendor of the firm land. It is true that but two kinds of plants, algæ or fucus, prosper upon the bottom of the sea, the one a jointed kind, having a threadlike form, the other jointless, and containing all the species that grow in submarine forests, or float like green meadows in the open sea. But their forms are so varied, their colors so brilliant, their number and size so enormous, that they change the deep into fabulous fairy gardens. And, as branches and leaves of firm, earth-rooted trees, tremble and bend on the elastic waves of the air, or wrestle, sighing and groaning, with the tempest's fury, so "the seaweed, slimy and dark, waves its arms, so lank and brown," and struggles with the ocean, that pulls at its roots, and tears its leaves into shreds. Now and then the mighty adversary is victorious, and rends them from their home, when they wander homeless and restless, in long, broad masses, towards the shores of distant lands, where often fields are found so impenetrable, that they have saved vessels from shipwreck, and many a human life from the hungry waves.

These different kinds of fucus dwell in various parts of the ocean, and have their own, well-defined limits. Some cling with hand-like roots so firmly to the rocky ground that, when strong waves pull and tear their upper parts, they often lift up gigantic masses of stone, and drag them, like huge anchors,

for miles and miles. Most of them, however, love the coast, or, at least, a firm sea bottom, and seldom thrive lower than at a depth of forty fathoms. Still, they are found in every sea; the most gigantic, strangely enough, in the two Arctics, where they reach the enormous length of 1,500 feet. Occasionally, they cover vast portions of the sea, and form those fabulous green meadows on deep, azure ground, which struck terror in the hearts of early navigators. The largest of these, called Sargossa Sea, between the Azores and the Antilles, is a huge floating garden, stretching, with a varying width of one to three hundred miles, over twentyfive degrees of latitude, so that Columbus spent three hopeless, endless weeks, in passing through this strange land of ocean-prairies!

Off

Take these fuci out of their briny element, and they present you with forms as whimsical as luxuriant. They are, in truth, nothing more than shapeless masses of jelly, covered with a leathery surface, and mostly dividing into irregular branches, which occasionally end in scanty bunches of real leaves. The first stem is thin and dry; it dies soon, but the plant continues to grow, apparently without limit. A few are eatable. Ireland grows the Carraghen-moss, with gracefully shaped and curled leaves, which physicians prescribe for pectoral diseases. Another kind of sea-fucus furnishes the swallows of the Indian Sea with the material for their world-famous edible nests. The sugar-fucus of the Northern Sea is broad as the hand, thin as a line, but miles long; well prepared, it gives the so-called Marma-sugar.

The Antarctic is the home of the most gigantic of all plants of this kind. The bladder-fucus grows to a length of a thousand feet in the very waters that are constantly congealing, and its long variegated foliage shines in bright crimson, or brilliant purple. The middle ribs of its magnificent leaves are supported underneath by huge bladders, which enable them to swim on the surface of the ocean. Off the Falkland Islands a fucus is found which resembles an appletree; it has an upright trunk, with forked branches, grass-like leaves, and an abundance of fruit. The roots and stem cling by means of clasping fibres to rocks above high-water mark, from them branches shoot upwards, and its long pendent leaves hang, like the willow's, dreamy and woe-begone, in the restless waters.

Besides the countless varieties of fucus,

the bottom of the sea is overgrown with the curled, deep purple leaves of the sealettuce, with large, porous lichens, and many-branched, hollow algae, full of life and motion in their rosy little bladders, thickly set with ever-moving, tiny

arms.

These plants form sub-marine forests, growing one into another, in apparently lawless order, here interlacing their branches, there forming bowers and long avenues; at one time thriving abundantly until the thicket seems impenetrable, then again leaving large openings between wold and wold, where smaller plants form a beautiful pink turf. There a thousand hues and tinges shine and glitter in each changing light. In the indulgence of their luxuriant growth, the fuci especially seem to gratify every whim and freak. Creeping close to the ground, or sending long-stretched arms, crowned with waving plumes, up to the blessed light of heaven, they form pale-green sea groves, where there is neither moon nor star, or rise up nearer to the surface, to be transcendently rich and gorgeous in brightest green, gold, and purple. And, through this dreamlike scene, playing in all the colors of the rainbow, and deep under the hollow, briny ocean, there sail and chase each other merrily, gaily painted mollusks, and bright shining fishes. Snails of every shape creep slowly along the stems, whilst huge, grey-haired seals hang with their enormous tusks on large, tall trees. There is the gigantic Dugong, the siren of the ancients, the sidelong shark with his leaden eyes, the thickhaired sea-leopard, and the sluggish turtle. Look how these strange, ill-shapen forms, which ever keep their dreamless sleep far down in the gloomy deep, stir 'themselves from time to time! See, how they drive each other from their rich pastures, how they seem to awaken in storms, rising like islands from beneath, and snorting through the angry spray! Perhaps they graze peacefully in the unbroken cool of the ocean's deep bed, when lo! a hungry shark comes slily, silently around that grove; its glassy eyes shine ghost-like with a yellow sheen, and seek their prey. The sea-dog first becomes aware of his dreaded enemy, and seeks refuge in the thickest recesses of the fucus forest. In an instant the whole scene changes. The oyster closes its shell with a clap, and throws itself into the deep below; the turtle conceals head and feet under her

impenetrable armor, and sinks slowly downward; the playful little fish disappear among the branches of the maerocystis; lobsters hide under the thick, clumsily-shapen roots, and the young walrus alone turns boldly round, and faces the intruder with his sharp, pointed teeth. The shark seeks to gain his urprotected side. The battle commences; both seek the forest; their fins become entangled in the closely interwoven branches; at last the more agile shark succeeds in wounding his adversary's side. Despairing of life, the bleeding walrus tries to conceal his last agony in the woods, but blinded by pain and blood, he fastens himself among the branches, and soon falls an easy prey to the shark, who greedily devours him.

A few miles further, and the scene changes. Here lies a large, undisturbed oyster bed, so felicitously styled, a concentration of quiet happiness. Dormant though the soft, glutinous creatures seem to be, in their impenetrable shells, each individual is leading the beautiful existence of the epicurean god. The world without, its cares and joys, its storms and calms, its passions, good and evilall are indifferent to the unheeding oyster. Its whole soul is concentrated in itself; its body is throbbing with life and enjoyment. The mighty ocean is subservient to its pleasures. Invisible to human eye, a thousand vibrating cilia move incessantly around every fibre of each fringing leaflet. To these the rolling waves waft fresh and choice food, and the flood of the current feeds the oyster, without requiring an effort. Each atom of water that comes in contact with its delicate gills, gives out its imprisoned air, to freshen and invigorate the creature's pellucid blood.

Here, in the lonely, weary sea, so restless and uneasy, we find, moreover, that strangest of all productions, half vegetable and half animal, the coral. From the tree-shaped limestone, springs forth the sense-endowed arm of the polypus; it grows, it feeds, it produces others, and then is turned again into stone, burying itself in its own rocky home, over which new generations build at once new rocky homes.

Thus it is that the many-shaped, farbranched coral-tree grows; only where the plants of the upper world bear leaves and flowers, there germinates here, from out of the stone, a living, sensitive animal, clad in the gay form and bright colors of flowers and adorned with