Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/254

Rh 184); and my experience agrees with his. Its attachment to the rock is commonly slight, and its base minute, so that it is sometimes difficult to procure a firmly growing specimen; still, however, it lives and grows, though with barely sufficient base to hold the filaments together. (See Plate II.)

The surfaces of the rocks are studded between tide-levels with that curious plant Rivularia nitida; which is sure to attract attention, with its little shining balls of vivid green colour, like school-boys' marbles, lying on little beds of vegetation that adhere to the naked rock. We attempt to take them up, and find them blown bladders of tender gelatinous membrane! In the early autumn this singular plant occurs in abundance on this spot, though it is said to be rare on our shores generally.

From this point onwards to the Nothe, the cliff is more and more precipitous, and the shore incumbered with immense blocks that have fallen from above, and lie confusedly heaped upon each other. The under surfaces of these angular masses occasionally yield fine specimens of some of the more delicate Algæ, but, generally speaking, the result scarcely repays the labour and difficulty of their examination.