Charming oscillation, fascinating motion, most graceful equivoque! On the confines of the two kingdoms of animal and vegetable life, Mind, under those faëry oscillations gives token of its first awakening, its dawn, its morning twilight, to be followed by a glorious and glowing noon. Those brilliant colors, those pearly and enamelled flashings, tell at once of the past night and the thought of the dawning day.
Thought! may we venture to call it so? No, it is still a Dream, which by degrees will clear up into Thought.
Already, in the north of Africa, over the other side of the Cape, the vegetable kingdom, which reigns alone in the temperate zone, sees itself rivalled, surpassed. The great enchantment progresses, increases, as we near the Equator. On the land,—tree, shrub, flower, weed, are proud and gorgeous, flaming in every bright color, delicate in every soft shade, and beneath the waters' slime and the ruddy corals. Beside parterres, that display rainbow beauties of every color and every tint, commence the stone plants; the madrepores, whose branches (should we not rather say their hands and fingers?) flourish in a rose-tinted snow; like peach or apple blossoms. Seven hundred leagues on either side of the Equator, you sail through this faëry land of magical illusion and wondrous beauty.
There are doubtful creatures, the Corallines, for instance, that are claimed by all the three kingdoms. They tend towards the animal, they tend towards the mineral, and, finally, are assigned to the vegetable. Perchance they form the real point at which Life obscurely and mysteriously rises from the slumber of the stone, without utterly quitting that rude starting-point, as if to remind us, so high placed and so haughty, of the right of even the humble mineral to rise into animation, and of the deep and eternal aspiration that lies buried, but busy, in the bosom of Nature.
"The fields and forests of our dry land," says Darwin, "appear sterile and empty, if we compare them with those of the sea." And, in fact, all who traverse the marvellous transparent Indian seas are thrilled, stirred, startled, by the phantasmagoria that flashes up from their far clear depths. Especially surprising is the interchange between animal and vegetable life of their especial and characteristic appearances. The soft impressible gelatinous plants, with rounded organs, that are neither precisely leaves nor precisely stalks, the delicacy of their animal curves—those Hogarthian "lines of beauty," seem to ask us to believe that they are veritable animals, while the real animals, on the other hand, in form, in color, in all, seem to do their utmost to be mistaken for vegetables. Each kingdom skilfully imitates the other. These have the solidity, the quasi permanence, of the tree; the others alternately expand and fade like the evanescent flower. Thus the sea Anemone opens as a roseate and pearly flower, or as a granite star with deep blue eyes; but when her corollæ have given forth an Anemone daughter, you see the fair mother droop, fade, die.
Far otherwise variable, that Proteus of the waters, the Halcyon, takes every form and every color. Now plant, now flower, it spreads itself out into a fanlike beauty, becomes a bushy hedge, or rounds itself into a graceful bouquet. But all this is so ephemeral, so fugitive, so timid, so shrinking, that at the slightest touch of the softest breath it disappears, and returns on the instant into the womb of the common mother. In these slight and fugitive forms you at once recognize the twin sisters of the sensitive plants of our earth; closing up, as they close at the first breath of evening.
When you gaze down upon a coral reef, you see the depths carpeted, many colored flowers with fungi, masses of snowy brilliancy; every hill, every valley, of the great deep, is variegated with a thousand forms, and a thousand colors, from the ruddy and outstretched branches of the coral, to the deep, rich, velvety green of the Cariophylles or violets, which seek their food by the gentle motion of the richly golden stamens. Above this lower world, as if to shade them from the too glowing kiss of the ardent sun, waves a whole forest of giant and dwarf trees and shrubs, and from tree to tree feathery spirals stretch and interlace like the loving and embracing tendrils of the vine, but finer in tendril and infinitely more splendid in their variegated and contrasting, yet singularly harmonizing colors.
This glorious sight inspires, yet agitates us; it is a dream, a vertigo; that Fay of the shifting mirage, the Sea, adding to these colors her own prismatic tints, fading, reappearing, now here, now gone, a capricious and fitful inconstancy, a hesitation, a doubt. Have we really seen it, this lovely scene? No, it was not so. Was it an entity, or a delusion? Yes, yes, it must be real, there are certainly very real beings there, for I see whole hosts of them lodged there and sporting there. The molluscs confide in that reality, for there you can see their pearly shells reflecting lights, now flashing and brilliant, and anon of a most tender delicacy; and the crab, too, believes in it, for see how he hastens on his sidelong path. Strange fish, vast and curious monsters of the deep, move hither and thither in their many colored vesture of purple and gold, and deep azure and delicate pink; and that delicate star, the Ophiure agitates his delicate and elegant arms.
In this phantasmagoria the arborescent Madrepore more gravely displays his less brilliant colors. His beauty is chiefly that of form.
But the chief attraction of the aspect of this vast community is in its entirety; the individual is humble, but the republic is imposing. Here you have the strong assemblage of aloes and cactus; there you have the superbly branching antlers of the Deer; and anon, you see the vast stretch of the vigorous branches of the giant cedar stretching at first horizontally, but tending to advance upward and upward still.