Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/46

Rh spot; the sea below of a pale greenish-blue hue, becoming more silvery as it merges into distance, and the reflection grows more perfect; the undulating outline of the land to the north, with those smoothly rounded swellings and sinkings that are so characteristic of the chalk formation; and now and then the broad white cliffs; Portland to the south, with its long breakwater, and its busy works on shore, from which some tin-covered roof happened at the moment to reflect the rays of the sun above direct to my eye, as if it had been a mirror; and beyond its precipices there was the sea again over the Chesil beach. The steamer "Contractor," gaudily painted in green and white, that plies between Weymouth and Portland, whose unpoetical name the good people here pronounce with a strongly marked accent on the first syllable,—was running across the bay, almost as if under my feet; and far away in the Channel some ocean steamer, of gigantic dimensions, was making her way upward, with a long line of black smoke streaming away behind her, half way across the horizon.

The birds and insects were enjoying the spring sunshine. A dozen larks were scattered about the sky, and humbler songsters were chirping among the brambles. A few wild bees were humming over the turf, which glittered with the yellow pilewort and bright-eyed daisy, but afforded as yet few of those flowers that bees delight in. Among the grass at the very verge of the precipice, as I sat there a moment to survey the shore below, I found that curious beetle Meloe proscarabæus, a rather large insect of a deep dull indigo tint, easily recognisable, should you ever