THE WEALTH OF THE SEA. THE ancients characterised the land as their Alma parens * ; yet how much more worthy does the ocean seem of this title! The dweller on the earth must sow the seed, plant trees, or turn the soil with his plough before he can gather in the grain that is to nourish him, or pluck the fruit that is to quench his thirst. Months, nay years, may pass before. his labors will be recompensed, and perhaps at the very moment when he is about to reap the reward of his toil, a blast of wind, or a hail-storm, comes utterly to destroy his hopes. The ocean demands no such protracted waiting, and gives birth to no such painful disappointments. The tide falls!—to work! to work! both young and old! there is room for all, and labor proportioned, to every age and to every degree of strength. The men and their sturdy helpmates, spade in hand, turn up the sand, which has been covered by the sea for some hours, and soon their baskets are filled with cockles, razor-fishes, and venusest, which although less delicate, are more nourishing than oysters; besides these, there is also the sand-eel, a little fish which is held in high esteem, but which is not as easily captured as the shell-fish, for it loves to hide itself under the sand, where it moves about with marvellous agility. During this time the young girls are dropping their pocket-like nets into the pools which have been left by the retiring tide, busily employed in collecting shrimps or in catching some lobster or crab, or, perchance, even some stray shore-fish which has been arrested before it could regain its distant place of retreat. Others, armed with a stick, terminating in a strong hook, scrape the sand below the stones and hollows of the rock, * Alma parens, or mater, foster-mother. [Also applied to a uni versity.] † Refer to table, p. 463, for the classification of this and other groups. and from time to time draw forth a conger-eel with glistening skin, or some cuttle-fish or calamary, which vainly attempts to escape by shrouding itself in a cloud of ink. The children in the meantime gather from the rocks limpets, periwinkles, whelks, roaring buckies, ormers, or mussels, which hang clustering together like bunches of grapes, suspended by the threads of the byssus *, which the animal weaves for itself. For two or three hours the beach is full of life and activity, whilst a whole population pours forth to seek its daily food; but soon the waves return towards the shore, the tide rises, and all hasten homeward, certain that the sea will replace the bounteous gifts which it is taking from them, and that in a few hours they may come forth again to reap a harvest which has needed no season of planting or of sowing. Quatrefages. THE MARGIN OF THE SEA. THE boundaries of the ocean are not invariable; while in some parts it encroaches upon the land, in others it retreats from the expanding coast. In many places we find the sea perpetually gnawing and undermining cliffs and rocks; and sometimes swelling with sudden rage it devours a broad expanse of plain, and changes fertile meads into a dreary waste of waters. The Goodwin Sands, notorious for the loss of many a noble vessel, were once a large tract of low ground belonging to Earl Goodwin, father of Harold, the last of our Saxon kings; and being afterwards enjoyed by the monastery of St. Augustine at Canterbury, the whole surface was drowned by the abbot's neglect to repair the wall which defended it from the sea. In spite of the endeavours of the Dutch to protect their flat land by dykes against the inundatory waters, the storm-flood has more than once burst through these artificial boundaries, and converted large districts into inland seas. * Byssus, a substance secreted by molluscs for the purpose stated. But the spaces which in this manner the dry land has gradually or suddenly lost, or still loses, to the chafing ocean are largely compensated for in other places by the vast accumulations of mud and sand which so many rivers continually carry along with them into the sea. Thus at the mouths of the Nile, of the Ganges, and of the Mississippi large alluvial plains have been deposited, which now form some of the most fruitful portions of the globe. The whole Delta of Egypt, Bengal, and Louisiana, have thus gradually emerged from the waters. The volcanic powers, which once caused the highest mountain chains to rise from the glowing bosom of the earth, are still uninterruptedly active in changing its surface, and are gradually displacing the present boundaries of sea and land, upheaving some parts and causing others to subside. On the coast of Sweden it has been ascertained that iron rings fixed to rocks which formerly served for the fastening of boats are at present much too high. Flat cliffs on which, according to ancient documents, seals used to be clubbed while enjoying the warm sunbeam, are now quite out of the reach of these amphibious animals. In the years 1731, 1752, and 1755, marks were hewn in some conspicuous rocks, which after the lapse of half a century were found to have risen about two feet higher above the level of the This phenomenon is confined to part of the coast, so that it is clearly the result of a local and slowly progressive upheaving. sea. Whilst a great part of Scandinavia is thus slowly but steadily rising, the shores of Chili have been found to rise convulsively under the influence of mighty volcanic shocks. Thus after the great earthquake of 1822 the whole coast, for the length of a hundred miles, was found to be three or four feet higher than before, and a further elevation was observed after the earthquake of Feb. 21st, 1835. Whilst to the north of Wolstenholme Sound Kane re marked signs of elevation, a converse depression was observed as he proceeded southwards along the coast of Greenland, Esquimaux huts being seen washed by the sea. The axis of oscillation must be somewhere about 77° N. lat. At Keeling Island, in the Indian Ocean, Mr. Darwin found evidence of subsidence. On every side of the lagoon, in which the water is as tranquil as in the most sheltered lake, old cocoa-nut trees were undermined and falling. The foundation-posts of a store-house on the beach, which the inhabitants had said stood seven years before just above high-water mark, were now daily washed by the tide. Earthquakes had been repeatedly remarked by the inhabitants, so that Darwin no longer doubted concerning the cause which made the trees to fall, and the store-house to be washed by the daily tide. On the columns of the temple of Serapis, near Puzzuoli, the astonished naturalist sees holes scooped out by pholades and lithodomas, twenty-four feet above the present level of the sea. These animals are marine testacea that have the power of burying themselves in stone, and cannot live beyond the reach of low water. How then have they been able to scoop out those hieroglyphic marks so far above the level of their usual abodes? for surely marble originally defective was never used for the construction of so proud an edifice. Alternate depressions and elevations of the soil afford us the only key to the enigma. Earthquakes and oscillations, so frequent in that volcanic region, must first have lowered the temple into the sea, where it was acted upon by the sacrilegious molluscs, and then again their upheaving powers must have raised it to its present elevation. Thus, even the solid earth changes its features, and reminds us of the mutability of all created things. Ibid. THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. WE dive into the liquid crystal of the Indian Ocean, and it opens to us the most wondrous enchantments of the fairy tales of our childhood's dreams. * The coloring surpasses everything: vivid green alternates with brown and yellow; rich tints of purple, from pale red-brown to the deepest blue; brilliant rosy, yellow, or peach-colored nullipores overgrow the decaying masses, and are themselves interwoven with the pearl-colored plates of the reptipores †, resembling the most delicate ivory carvings. Close by wave the yellow and lilac fans, perforated like trellis-work, of the gorgonias. The clear sand strange forms at the bottom is covered with the thousand and tints of 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 purplestriped limpets cling like monstrous cochineal insects upon their trunks. Like gigantic cactus-blossoms, sparkling in the most ardent colors, the sea-anemones expand their crowns of tentacles upon the broken rocks, or more modestly embellish the 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 home, and the flaming Reptipores, ditto. Gorgonias, a genus of Ceratophyta, family Corticati, class * Nullipores, see note, p. 444. Polypi. 8 Flustras and escharas, belonging to the Molluscoida; see table, p. 463. Ranunculuses, crowfoot and spearwort; of a poisonous cha racter. |