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"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. A 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.

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."

Few things are more beautiful than to look down from a boat into transparent water. At the bottom wave graceful sea-weeds, brown, green, or rose-coloured, and of most varied forms; on them and on the sands or rocks rest starfishes, mollusca, crustaceans, Seaanemones, and innumerable other animals of strange forms and varied colours; in the clear water float or dart about endless creatures; true fishes, many of them brilliantly coloured Cuttle-fishes like bad dreams; Lobsters and Crabs with graceful, transparent Shrimps; Worms swimming about like living ribbons, some with thousands of coloured eyes, and Medusæ like living glass of the richest and softest hues, or glittering in the sunshine with. all the colours of the rainbow.

And on calm, cool nights how often have I 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 sud

denly 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 con

trary, 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 wonderful and peculiar life of their own. Fish have been dredged up even from a depth of 2750 fathoms.

The conditions of life in the Ocean depths are very peculiar. The light of the sun cannot penetrate beyond about two hundred

fathoms; deeper than this complete darkness prevails. Hence in many species the eyes have more or less completely disappeared.

Sir Wyville Thomson mentions a kind of Crab (Ethusa granulata), which when living near the surface has well developed eyes; in deeper water, 100 to 400 fathoms, eyestalks are present, but the animal is apparently blind, the eyes themselves being absent; while in specimens from a depth of 500-700 fathoms the eyestalks themselves have lost their special character, and have become fixed, their terminations being combined into a strong, pointed beak.

In other deep sea creatures, on the contrary, the eyes gradually become more and more developed, so that while in some species the eyes gradually dwindle, in others they become unusually large.

Many of the latter species may be said to be a light to themselves, being provided with a larger or smaller number of curious luminous organs. The deep sea fish are either silvery, pink, or in many cases black, sometimes relieved with scarlet, and when the luminous