Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/163

 and perpendicular, sustained by the density of the element which gave them birth. So stiff were they that when put aside by the hand they sprang back into their former places. This was indeed a kingdom of uprightness!

I soon grew accustomed to this peculiarity, and also to the partial obscurity which surrounded us. The ground was encumbered with sharp blocks of stone, difficult to avoid. The submarine flora appeared to me to be as extensive, and even more rich, than under the tropical or arctic zones, where the productions are less numerous. But for some minutes I involuntarily confounded the zoophytes and hydrophytes, the animals and the plants.

And who would not have done so? so thickly are the flora and fauna of this submarine world interspersed. I observed that all these productions of the vegetable kingdom were only attached to the ground by a single superficial base. Deprived of roots, indifferent to a solid body, sand, shellfish, shells, or shingle, which supported them, they only asked a support, not life. These plants are born of themselves. The principle of their existence is the water, which nourishes and sustains them. The greater number of them, instead of leaves, possessed only capriciously-formed lamels, and very limited in their scales of colour, which only included rose-carmine, green, olive, fawn-colour, and brown.

I perceived here—but not dried, as on board the Nautilus—the “peacock-padines,” spread out in a fan-like form, as if to woo the breeze, and a number of other marine plants totally devoid of flowers. “A curious anomaly, a whimsical element,” as has been said by a