A goodly catalogue this, surely, of the inhabitants of three or four large stones; and yet how small a specimen of the multitudinous nations of the sea!
From the bare rocks above high-water mark, down to abysses deeper than ever plummet sounded, is life, everywhere life; fauna after fauna, and flora after flora, arranged in zones, according to the amount of light and warmth which each species requires, and to the amount of pressure which they are able to endure. The crevices of the highest rocks, only sprinkled with salt spray in spring-tides and high gales, have their peculiar little univalves, their crisp lichen-like sea-weed, in myriads; lower down, the region of the Fuci (bladder-weeds) has its own tribes of periwinkles and limpets; below again, about the neap-tide mark, the region of the corallines and Algæ furnishes food for yet other species who graze on its watery meadows; and beneath all, only uncovered at low spring-tide, the zone of the Laminariæ (the great tangles and ore-weeds) is most full of all of every imaginable form of life. So that as we descend the rocks, we may compare ourselves (likening small things to great) to those who, descending the Andes, pass in a single day from the vegetation of the Arctic zone to that of the Tropics. And here and there, even at half-tide level, deep rock-basins, shaded from the sun and always full of water, keep up in a higher zone the vegetation of a lower one, and afford in nature an analogy to those deep “barrancos” which split the high table-land of Mexico, down whose awful cliffs, swept by cool sea-breezes, the traveller looks from among the plants and animals of the temperate zone, and sees far below, dim through their everlasting vapour-bath of rank hot steam, the mighty forms and gorgeous colours of a tropic forest.
“I do not wonder,” says Mr. Gosse, in his charming “Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast” (p. 187), “that when Southey had an opportunity of seeing some of those beautiful quiet basins hollowed in the living rock, and stocked with elegant plants and animals, having all the charm of novelty to his eye, they should have moved his poetic fancy, and found more than one place in the gorgeous imagery of his Oriental romances. Just listen to him
“It was a garden still beyond all price,
Even yet it was a place of paradise;
* * * * * *
And here were coral bowers,
And grots of madrepores,
And banks of sponge, as soft and fair to eye
As e’er was mossy bed
Whereon the wood-nymphs lie
With languid limbs in summer’s sultry hours.
Here, too, were living flowers,
Which, like a bud compacted,
Their purple cups contracted;
And now in open blossom spread,
Stretch’d, like green anthers, many a seeking head.
And arborets of jointed stone were there,
And plants of fibres fine as silkworm’s thread;
Yea, beautiful as mermaid’s golden hair
Upon the waves dispread.
Others that, like the broad banana growing,
Raised their long wrinkled leaves of purple hue,
Like streamers wide outflowing.’—Kehama, xvi. 5.
“A hundred times you might fancy you saw the type, the very original of this description, tracing, line by line, and image by image, the details of the picture; and acknowledging, as you proceed, the minute truthfulness with which it has been drawn. For such is the loveliness of nature in these secluded reservoirs, that the accomplished poet, when depicting the gorgeous scenes of Eastern mythology—scenes the wildest and most extravagant that imagination could paint—drew not upon the resources of his prolific fancy for imagery here, but was well content to jot down the simple lineaments of Nature as he saw her in plain, homely England.
“It is a beautiful and fascinating sight for those who have never seen it before, to see the little shrubberies of pink coralline—‘the arborets of jointed stone’—that fringe those pretty pools. It is a charming sight to see the crimson banana-like leaves of the Delesseria waving in their darkest corners; and the purple fibrous tufts of Polysiphonia and Ceramia, ‘fine as silkworm’s thread.’ But there are many others which give variety and impart beauty to these tide-pools. The broad leaves of the Ulva, finer than the finest cambric, and of the brightest emerald-green, adorn the hollows at the highest level, while, at the lowest, wave tiny forests of the feathery Ptilota and Dasya, and large leaves, cut into fringes and furbelows, of rosy Rhodymeniæ. All these are lovely to behold; but I think I admire as much as any of them, one of the commonest of our marine plants, Chondrus crispus. It occurs in the greatest profusion on this coast, in every pool between tide-marks; and everywhere—except in those of the highest level, where constant exposure to light dwarfs the plant, and turns it of a dull umber-brown tint—it is elegant in form and brilliant in colour. The expanding fan-shaped fronds, cut into segments, cut, and cut again, make fine bushy tufts in a deep pool, and every segment of every frond reflects a flush of the most lustrous azure, like that of a tempered sword-blade.”—Gosse’s Devonshire Coast, pp. 187–189.
And the sea-bottom, also, has its zones, at different depths, and its peculiar forms in peculiar spots, affected by the currents and the nature of the ground, the riches of which have to be seen, alas! rather by the imagination than the eye; for such spoonfuls of the treasure as the dredge brings up to us, come too often rolled and battered, torn from their sites and contracted by fear, mere hints to us of what the populous reality below is like. Often, standing on the shore at low tide, has one longed to walk on and in under the waves, as the water-ousel does in the pools of the mountain burn, and see it all but for a moment; and a solemn beauty and meaning has invested the old Greek fable of Glaucus the fisherman: how eating of the herb which gave his fish strength to leap back into their native element, he was seized on the spot with a strange longing to follow them under the waves, and became for ever a companion of the fair semi-human forms with which the Hellenic poets peopled their sunny bays and firths, feeding “silent flocks” far below on the green Zostera beds, or basking with them on the sunny ledges in the summer noon, or wandering in the still bays on sultry nights amid the choir of Amphitrite and her sea-nymphs:—
“Joining the bliss of the gods, as they waken the coves with their laughter,”
in nightly revels, whereof one has sung,—
“So they came up in their joy; and before them the roll of the surges
Sank, as the breezes sank dead, into smooth green foam-flecked marble
Awed; and the crags of the cliffs, and the pines of the mountains, were silent.
So they came up in their joy, and around them the lamps of the sea-nymphs,
Myriad fiery globes, swam heaving and panting, and rainbows,
Crimson, and azure, and emerald, were broken in star-showers, lighting,
Far in the wine-dark depths of the crystal, the gardens of Nereus,
Coral, and sea-fan, and tangle, the blooms and the palms of the ocean.
So they went on in their joy, more white than the foam which they scattered,
Laughing and singing and tossing and twining; while, eager, the Tritons
Blinded with kisses their eyes, unreproved, and above them in worship
Fluttered the terns, and the sea-gulls swept past them on silvery pinions,
Echoing softly their laughter; around them the wantoning dolphins
Sighed as they plunged, full of love; and the great sea-horses which bore them
Curved up their crests in their pride to the delicate arms of their riders,
Pawing the spray into gems, till a fiery rainfall, unharming,
Sparkled and gleamed on the limbs of the maids, and the coils of the mermen.
So they went on in their joy, bathed round with the fiery coolness,
Needing nor sun nor moon, self-lighted, immortal: but others,
Pitiful, floated in silence apart; on their knees lay the sea-boys
Whelmed by the roll of the surge, swept down by the anger of Nereus;
Hapless, whom never again upon quay or strand shall their mothers
Welcome with garlands and vows to the temples; but, wearily pining,
Gaze over island and main for the sails which return not; they, heedless,
Sleep in soft bosoms for ever, and dream of the surge and the sea-maids.
So they passed by in their joy, like a dream, on the murmuring ripple.”