Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/330

304 like trellis-work, of the Gorgonias. The clear sand of the bottom is covered with the thousand strange forms and tints of the sea-urchins and star- fishes. The leaf-like flustras and escharas adhere like mosses and lichens to the branches of the corals; the yellow, green, and purple-striped limpets cling like monstrous cochineal insects upon their trunks. Like gigantic cactus-blossoms, sparkling in the most ardent colours, the sea-anemones expand their crowns of tentacles upon the broken rocks, or more modestly embellish the flat bottom, looking like beds of variegated ranunculuses. Around the blossoms of the coral shrubs play the humming-birds of the ocean, little fish sparkling with red or blue metallic glitter, or gleaming in golden green, or in the brightest silvery lustre. Softly, like spirits of the deep, the delicate milk-white or bluish bells of the jelly-fishes float through this charmed world. Here the gleaming violet and gold-green Isabelle, and the flaming yellow, black, and vermilion-striped coquette, chase their prey; there the band-fish shoots, snake-like, through the thicket, like a long silver ribbon, glittering with rosy and azure hues. Then come the fabulous cuttle-fishes, decked in all the colours of the rainbow, but marked by no definite outline, appearing and disappearing, intercrossing, joining company and parting again, in most fantastic ways; and all this in the most rapid change, and amid the most wonderful play of light and shade altered by every breath of wind, and every slight curling of the surface of the ocean. When day declines, and the shades of night lay hold upon the deep, this fantastic garden is lighted lip in new splendour. Millions of glowing sparks, little microscopic medusas and crustaceans, dance like glow-worms through the gloom. The sea-feather, which by daylight is vermilion-coloured, waves in a greenish, phosphorescent light. Every corner of it is lustrous. Parts which by day were perhaps dull and brown, and retreated from the sight amid the universal brilliancy of colour, are now radiant in the most wonderful play of green, yellow, and red light; and, to complete the wonders of the enchanted night, the silver disk, six feet across, of the moon fish, moves, slightly luminous, among the cloud of little sparkling stars. The most luxuriant vegetation of a tropical landscape cannot unfold as great wealth of form, while in the variety and splendour of colour it would stand far behind this garden landscape, which is strangely composed exclusively of animals, and