AN AQUATIC EXCURSION. 125 latitude. Whilst at Ranenfiord, in Norway, rye is still cultivated, the same latitude in North America chains everything in snow and ice almost throughout the summer. While wheat is growing in Drontheim, at Hudson's Bay, in the same latitude, no human habitation is possible; and in Siberia, under the same line, the earth thaws only two feet even in the height of summer. Drontheim has about the temperature of Canada, which yet lies south of Paris. In New York, parallel with Naples, trees bloom at the same time with those at Upsala. Spitzbergen has a sort of brief summer, while a warm summer day on Melville's Isle, which lies three degrees further south, may have fourteen degrees of cold.'-p. 122. We have left untouched a great deal of interesting matter in this lecture, for there are still tempting ones before us. Dr. Schleiden good-temperedly closes it by anticipating the answer to the inquiry, Was the lecture interesting?' as given in a compassionate shrug of the shoulders, with, Oh, there was nothing talked of but the weather!' Our young readers who may have followed us thus far, will perhaps now oblige us by making extensive preparations for the two following chapters, as they will be found particularly necessary at this season of the year, and especially in cases of fashionable 'colds.' Invoke the genius of gutta percha, cork, and macintosh; summon the shades of departed umbrellas, (for they generally are not,' when most required,) seize the unrelenting clog, and follow the descending path before you until you reach the caves of Neptune. We will humour Professor Schleiden in his fancy of going down to the Water and its Inhabitants,' by way of Heligoland; and if all are equipped, off we set. The storm which has agitated Germany during the last two years, here drearily howling and destroying the fair green corn, yonder rousing up spirits good and bad, left one small spot of our fatherland untouched. A happy little people, among whom scarcely a physician and never a lawyer could earn his bread, which, just in its most valuable possessions, practises a sort of peaceful communism. There lives the Heligolander, undisturbed by these wild ferments, upon his solitary rock in the North Sea, and cheerfully welcomes the guest who seeks mental or bodily strength and repose in this secure asylum. 'Green is the land, Red is the cliff, These the colours of the holy land,' is the motto which explains the colours of their flag. The stranger, when conveyed in the rocking boat from the steamer which has brought him, to the narrow landing-place at the foot of the perpendicular rocks, reads it on the stern of many anchored boats, between which he passes. A path, about five minutes in length, through the barren vegetation which has gained for it the name of the potato walk, from jocose visitors, leads us to the highest point of the island, the Belvedere. Meanwhile, our party has been increased by some ladies, a couple of naturalists, a physician, and one or two English captains. The conversation becomes animated and varied; in such a neighbourhood and such society, where could it turn but upon the water. Perhaps it may not be uninteresting to follow the drift of the remarks, though we may not be able to trace them to the individual speakers. The prospect from the Belvedere is as remarkable as it is imposing. Before us lies the upper surface of the rock, 200 feet in height; to the left the little town, with its low church tower; to the right the English lighthouse, and behind it the old beacon, looking like a ruined castle. It is surrounded, at all times of the day, by the vigorous Heligolanders looking out on all sides, across the sea, for events that may summon them away. No tree breaks the panoramic view; the mighty storm wind, before which the strongest must so bow as to creep along on all-fours, allows no bush to grow beyond the height of a garden hedge. The island itself, heing at the farthest scarce two thousand paces long, offers no farther prospect; all lies before us with clear, distinct outline in the transparent sea air. On the right, the western coast juts out into the green sea, broken up in narrow clefts, in gigantic arches and grotesque caverns, or in separate pillar-like cliffs of reddish stone. The southern point fronts, like the sharp keel of a vessel, the streams of the Elbe and the Weser. On the left, the eastern coast conceals the little landing-place, formed of sand and other deposits, and covered with about thirty houses. Farther out is the silvery play of the surf, marking the rise of the sand-banks, which a deep arm of the sea separates from Heligoland. All this is surrounded by the unbounded mirror of ocean and the pure horizon. . . . We are, however, deceived by this appearance of repose. There is no possibility of rest to this liquid variable element. Even without the equilibrum of the surface being affected by the pressure of the disturbed air, water is subject to three regular movements, occasioned by the irresistible power of the sun and moon. They pursue their fixed and almost silent course, accomplishing greater and wider objects than the most fearful uproar of the angry elements, in the West Indian tornado and the Chinese tyfoon. . 'Es freue sich, Was da lebet im rosigen Licht; Da unten aber ists fürchterlich, Und der Mensch versuche die Götter nicht, Und begehre nimmer und nimmer zu schauen, 'Only learn to know those ghastly depths, hidden by the shining, treacherous glass. You sink down and down-the blue of heaven, the light of day vanish-a fiery yellow surrounds you, then a flaming red, as though you were plunged into an infernal vaporous sea, without fire, without warmth. The red becomes darker, purple, black THE SUBMARINE LANDSCAPE. 127 you are imprisoned in impenetrable night. And what lives and moves around you, is an existence without joy, without harmony, an incessant chasing and fleeing, seizing and devouring, an infinite hatred, an eternal murder-one never-ceasing creation of victims for insatiate, restless death. And as light and colour disappear in the night which covers the silent endless war, the unheard slaughter, so also the beauty and grace of form are no more there, but a companionship of the awkward with the ugly, the repulsive, and the misshapen. 'No good genius reigns in these depths, only malicious sprites, and false seducing Undines traverse the desolate region. Thus is the world of waters pictured by the belief of the people, by the earliest knowledge of this almost inaccessible province; and the gradual growth of science can only heighten the colour, and add new and stronger features. But to the restless, progressive mortal, nothing earthly remains for ever closed; he will make a road everywhere; even into the `unfathomable ocean he carries the torch of inquiry, and in its light many things assume a different expression, and show a pleasanter face. Old Night in fleeing takes with it its children also, the terrible phantoms. Many features in this picture must remain true and unchangeable; Science must more and more confirm the fact, that the living creatures in the sea are maintained only by killing and devouring one another; that among the thousands and thousands of species there is scarcely one animal, with certainty so called, which nourishes itself in a peaceful manner by the rich flora of the sea. The submarine vegetation is almost exclusively represented by one great class of plants, the Algae,' or sea weeds. Though very uniform in their organs of propagation, they still display such an extraordinary variety of form, that a landscape at the bottom of the sea is scarcely less interesting and diversified than a spot to which the tropical sun has lent its character of vegetable luxuriance. The singular construction of all parts, now soft and gelatinous, now hard and gristly; the union of round, elongated, and flattened organs, which make the use of the expressions, 'stalk and leaf,' wholly unsuitable. The splendour and intensity of colour, green, olive, yellow, red, purple, sometimes united in a rainbow-shape on the leaf-like surface, give to this vegetation the character of the extraordinary and fabulous. Even in the time of Linnæus our knowledge of these plants was very limited. The seventy species which that father of botany knew of when he laid down his system, have now increased to almost two thousand. And it is not only the lesser species which might easily be overlooked, but the very largest, the giants of the watery forest, from one to fifteen hundred feet in length, which have been made known to us by our more modern investigators. Lamourcoux, Bory, St. Vincent, and Greville have most distinguished themselves in this field of science. But above all, the late expeditions of Captain Ross to the south polar regions, and the travels undertaken at the expense of the Emperor of Russia and the Petersburg Academy, by Martius, Postels, Von Baer, and others in the northern polar lands, have opened to us new views on this subject. It is not the least interesting fact of these investigations, that the Alga are distinctly divided like the land vegetation by geographical boundaries. If we remember, that on the shore the geographical distribution of plants is chiefly ordered by the various apportionment of damp and heat, but that the sea is capable of no such great variety of temperature, and in comparatively shallow water has the same degree of heat in all zones, it must astonish us to find, in the submarine flora, such essential differences in connected or at least bordering regions; differences such as exist between the Black Sea and the Adriatic, or between the Polar Sea along the coasts of Lapland and Siberia and the Kamschatka Sea and coasts of the Kuriles. We may say, generally, that the Algæ are developed in greatest abundance in the temperate zones, while towards the equator and the poles they are less luxuriant. 'On the coasts of the island of Sitka, the diver finds this strange vegetation in its richest development. Plant crowds on plant like an ancient forest. The little confervæ and ectocarpe cover the ground with a green velvet carpet, on which the meer salat, with its broader foliage, represents the larger plants; among these shine the large mantle-shaped fronds of the Iridæ, in rose-colour or scarlet; different sorts of tangle cover the cliffs with a dark olive colour, while amongst it the delicate colour of the sea-rose peeps out here and there. In yellow, green, and red, the brilliant network of the thalassiophylla and agaræ, larger bushes of this forest, spreads in broad fan-like fronds, of many feet, upon the trembling stream. Its trees are the broad ribbonlike undulating laminare, often thirty feet in length, varied by the bushy branches of the macrocystæ, with their large pear-like bladders, and then the long-stalked alaræ, whose stem, strangely surrounded with a bunch of cup-like leaves, spreads itself upwards in a giant leaf of fifty feet. But above and between all these, hover the marvellous nereocystæ. Out of a sort of coral root proceeds a thin, thread-like stalk, to the length of seventy feet, gradually assuming a club shape, and swelling out into a large bladder. On this hangs a bunch of smaller leaves, of about thirty feet long. They might be called the palm of the sea; and this entire immense plant is the product of a few months. Every year it dies, and is reproduced by its seeds. The ground of these forests is animated by sea-stars and shells. Between the foliage hurry the greedy fishes to and fro after their weaker prey, and on the floating islands formed by the closely crowded leaves of the nereocystæ reposes the shining sea otter, warming itself comfortably in the sunshine; and among the inhabitants, therefore, takes its name from this animal (Bobrowaja Kapusta). 'Let us now leave these marine woods, with their vegetable giants, varying from five to fifteen hundred feet in length (Macrocystis Pyrifera), and turn to the torrid zone. 'We dive beneath the liquid crystal of the Indian Ocean, and our childhood's dreams of the marvellous magic of fairyland are realized. The strangely-branching bushes bear living flowers. Thick masses of maandrinæ and astra contrast with the cup-shaped, leaf-like growth of the explanaræ; with the madreporæ, branching now in finger or stalk-like twigs, now in the most graceful sprays. The colouring is unsurpassed lively green, mingling with brown or yellow, and with rich shadowy purple, from the palest red brown to the deepest blue. Pink, yellow, and peach-coloured nullipora cover the decayed masses, and are enwoven with the peach-coloured surface and delicate ivory carving of the retipora. Beside them move the lilac and yellow trellis-work wings of the gorgonæ; the clear sand of the bottom is covered with the thousand eccentric shapes and colours of the star-fish and sea-urchin. Like moss and lichens, the leaf-like flustræ and escharæ cling to the branches of coral, and their stalks are covered as with huge cochineals, by the yellow, green, and purple-striped patellæ. Like gigantic cactus flowers, in most brilliant glowing colours, the sea anemone spreads its circles of feelers on the broken rock, or more modestly adorns a level bed, like the coloured ranunculus. . . Then come the fabulous Sepias, in all the colours of the rainbow, which rise and vanish without any distinct features; now running fantastically in and out, seeking each other, and then separating; and all this in the most rapid change and marvellous play of light and shade, varying with each breath of wind, each gentle curling of the water's surface. When day declines, and the shadows of night possess the deep also, this fantastic garden is illuminated with fresh splendour. Millions of glowing sparks, through the microscope, little crabs and medusæ, dance like glow-worms in the darkness. In the greenish phosphoric light, waves the sea feather (veretillum cynomorium), by day vermilion coloured. Every corner is luminous; what, perhaps, by day was brown and unsightly amid the general brilliancy, now beams in the changing radiance of red, green, and yellow light; and to complete the wonders of this magic night, the six foot silver disk of the moon-fish (orthagoriscus mola) shines softly through the crowd of twinkling stars.'-p. 168. We have not space for half the interesting pages which here follow on this subject, and on that of the coral formations. One extract, and we must once more ascend to a drier region. 'The boundary of the upward growth of corals is formed by the lowest watermark, as they immediately die when touched by sun and air. They never build in dark, never in quiet water, but, strangely enough, in the midst of the most boisterous surf; so that here the living power triumphantly combats the devastating force of the wave which even the hardest rock cannot withstand. Weighing these facts, and carefully observing all the changes in the formation and appearance of the coral reefs, Darwin came to the astonishing conclusion, that the fundamental cause of these phenomena is not the building of the coral insects, but rather the gradual rising or sinking of the |