To the laminarian succeeds the coralline zone, extending in most places some thirty fathoms or more. Plants, indeed, are rare, but here the horny plant-like sertularias love to rear their graceful feathery branches, and form miniature gardens of fairy-like delicacy and beauty; and here carnivorous mollusks, whelks above all, prowl in great numbers. Bivalves of remarkable elegance, especially clams and scallops, are found buried in multitudes beneath its gravels and muddy sands; and no less plentifully congregate the spider-crabs, with many other peculiar crustaceans. As a natural consequence of this well-furnished table, fishes abound, and many of our deep sea and white fisheries owe their value to the zoological features of the coralline zone.
Last and lowest of our regions of submarine existence is that of deep-sea corals, so named on account of the great stony zoophytes characteristic of it in the oceanic seas of Europe. Many sea-stars and sea-urchins are likewise found in this region, in the depths of which the number of peculiar creatures is few, yet sufficient to give it a marked character.
Whelk.
Gurnard.
The aspect of the British submarine fauna is in general more remarkable for elegance of form and neat simplicity than for glaring or vivid hues. "The smaller kinds of sponges are not seldom brilliantly dyed, but the more conspicuous kinds are tawny or brownish. The sea-anemones are elegantly variegated with rich colours, but the majority of zoophytes are not strikingly tinted. The star-fishes, as a group, are most remarkable among the invertebrata for gorgeous painting, but our sea-urchins are sombre when compared with their relatives from warmer seas. The jelly-fish are occasionally tinged with delicate hues, and some of the smaller kinds even showily ornamented; but those which most figure in our waters are not conspicuous on account of colour, however elegant in their contours. Our marine shells, though often pretty, are not gaudy or attractive, except in rare instances. The same may be said with almost equal truth of our marine crustaceans, though, on close inspection, the elegance of device on the carapaces of many species is exceedingly admirable."
Our fishes are not distinguished by brilliancy of colour. "Their hues are quaker-like, though sufficiently lustrous for sober tinting. The cod and flounder tribes are among the most characteristic, and such of the more common fishes as belong to families of which we have but few representatives are in most instances clothed in sober grey and silver. Beauty of no mean description may, however, be displayed by these modest vestments; as, for instance, in the mackerel and the herring. Our gorgeously decorated wrasses form the chief exception to the general rule, but these belong to a family more characteristic of the southern seas. A like deficiency in the numbers of the gurnard and mackerel tribes seriously affects the aspect of our piscine fauna when compared with denizens of the Mediterranean." The sharks and rays too are comparatively deficient, although a few species, as we have seen in a former chapter, are, to the great annoyance of our fishermen, over-abundant. The sea-eels are also few, though in the common conger and the larger sand-eel (Ammodytes lancea) we have two very conspicuous species.
Sand-Eel. | Grey Mullet. |
Red Mullet. | Salmon. |