'Look like flowers beneath the flattering brine,'
whose prettily tinted fronds will 'grow, bloom, and luxuriate' for months upon my table. They do not want careful planting, or close attention, or even—
'Like their earthly sisters, pine for drought,'
but are strong and hardy, like the pretty wild flowers that adorn our fields and hedge-rows. In the pages of an album, I can, if so disposed, feast my eyes for years upon their graceful forms, whilst their colours will remain as bright as when first transplanted from their native haunts by the sea-shore.
The entomologist delights to stroll in the forest and the field, to hear the pleasant chirp of the cricket in the bladed grass, to watch the honey people bustling down in the blue bells, or even to net the butterfly as it settles on the sweet pea-blossom, while I am content to ramble along the beach, and watch the ebb and flow of the restless sea—
'So fearful in its spleeny humours bent,
So lovely in repose—'
or search for nature's treasures among the weed-clad rocks left bare by the receding tide.
A disciple of the above mentioned branch of natural history will dilate with rapture upon the wondrous transformations which many of his favourite insects undergo. But none that he can show surpasses in grandeur and beauty the changes which are witnessed in many members of the marine animal kingdom. He points to the leaf, to the bloom upon the peach, brings his microscope and bids me peer in, and behold the mysteries of creation which his instrument unfolds. 'Look,' he says, pointing to the verdant leaf, 'at the myriads of beings that inhabit this simple object. Every atom,' he exultingly exclaims, 'is a standing miracle, and adorned with such qualities, as could not be impressed upon it by a power less than infinite!' Agreed. But has not the zoologist equal reason to be proud of his science and its hidden marvels? Can he not exhibit equal miracles of divine power?
Take, as an example, one of the monsters of the deep, the whale; and we shall find, according to several learned writers, that this animal carries on its back and in its tissues a mass of creatures so minute, that their number equals that of the entire population of the globe. A single frond of marine algæ, in size
'No bigger than an agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,'