finding sufficient nourishment in the circumambient waters, have no occasion to detach a party of roots into the ground, and forage the earth for sustenance. Instead, therefore, of penetrating, they are but just tacked to the bottom, and adhere to some solid substance, only with such a degree of tenacity as may secure them from being tossed to and fro by the random agitation of the waves."

There are two striking peculiarities in sub-marine vegetables, which deserve our notice. Several of them are furnished with a number of appendages in the form of globes or bladders; and, instead of an uniformity of colour, these are found to be diversified with a dissimilarity of tints. The former, however, from emitting a loud noise when broken, we have reason to conclude may possibly serve the purpose of air-vessels to the plants, and we need not go far to have the mystery solved, why they are made to differ so much in colour from each other.

Let us attend to the operations of yonder angler, and behold with what eagerness the unsuspecting fish, guided by the eye, rushes on the deceitful bait ; if we can, therefore, for a moment harbour the supposition that it is by the eye the finny tribes are, in a great degree, directed in their movements, and knowing, as we do, that some of them delight in vegetable food, we must see at once the propriety of such a variety in the colour of the carpet that covers the bed of the ocean, and the wisdom in the contrivance of its different hues. Without dwelling on the several uses of the vegetable productions of the great

deep, we will briefly observe, that, besides serving as articles of food to so many of the watery regions, particularly to those of the Shell kind, which abound chiefly among them, these afford, among their intricate and perplexing labyrinths, a safe retreat for the weak from the strong; a commodious lodgement for a variety of shell-fish, and convenient recesses for numbers of the finny tribes to betake themselves to, for the purpose of depositing their spawn; and to those who make use of their leaves on the occasion, these plants seem to be admirably adapted to the glary matter which covers their substance, not only preventing the eggs from being easily washed off before they are hatched, but affording, in all likelihood, an immediate supply of nutricious food for the young, before they are fitted for any thing more gross; and this may be the reason, as well as the safety which their concealment insures, why so many of the weak and smaller fry are found among them.

These few specimens may serve to show in what respects sea vegetables may be of use in the economy of nature; and we will just notice two or three of the many instances in which they may be said more directly to contribute to the service of man.

The utility of the Sponge, (an article which takes its rise from those rocky beds,) in several of our most useful arts and manufactures, is well known. The sea weed, made into kelp, forms a principal ingredient in the composition of soap and glass; and is found on our rocks and shores in great abundance. After being spread out and dried in the summer

months, it is raked together and burnt in those hollows which we observe on the beach. The ashes form what is called kelp, which is used in the composition of soap and glass, as well as in the alum works. Soap is an article too well known for its cleansing quality to need description; and without the aid of glass, to what miseries and inconveniences must we be exposed, without taking into consideration the darkness that must still have hung over our mental horizon, had it not been for the invigorating powers of those magical instruments that have brought a new creation to our notice! But of all the uses to which sea vegetables can be applied, there is not one so valuable as that to which they may be converted, when in a state of putrescence, in the form of manure, for promoting the interests of agriculture and vegetation upon land.

How surprising that these pliant productions of the bed of the ocean, when worn out, or in a state of decay, should possess the amazing qualities of rendering more fertile our fields and meadows, of causing the barren tracts to bring forth, and of renovating the exhausted powers of the cultivated districts! On this strange circuit of reproduction, we cannot say, "out of the eater cometh forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness;" but we have abun dant reason to remark, that out of death came forth life, that out of putrefaction came forth vitality!

Animal Flowers.

Half removed from the objects we have just been considering, we observe, on our way to those of a higher order, a number of curious productions in the form of fleshy excrescences among the rocks and stones; some with their heads drawn close together, and others spread out at top in all the luxuriance of a full blown flower. These, on account of their firm adherence to a particular spot, and apparent want of sensibility, might be taken for vegetables; but, upon minute examination, they will be found to constitute part of that superior class, or uniting link between the vegetable and animal creation, that we had occasion to mention in a preceding chapter upon Quadrupeds, under the appellation of Animal Flowers. Let us attend to the operations of one of them, and we shall soon discover, that what at first wore the appearance of a still, inanimate, full-blown flower, has something of a living and active principle in it. Touch its diverging rays or filaments, and see how they contract; but in this you may say it does no more than the sensitive plant; make, however, an ́other experiment, and put a shell-fish on its orifice, behold how it extends itself to receive it, with what efforts it sucks it in, and how the under part of the body swells as it forces the food into the stomach. It is not, however, capable of digesting the shelly substance, and see with what artifice it disgorges it, after having stript it of its contents. These are certainly not the properties of mere vegetables.—But

what is that other one about? It has put forth in array all its little fleshy horns or feelers; with some of them it has laid hold of an insect, which it is in the act of conveying to its mouth; it soon is made to disappear in the aperture, and the dilating of the under extremity, or stalk of the flower, plainly evinces its progress downwards; these are certainly the functions of animal life, and from these and such like actions, what at first might appear as nothing more than vegetables, have justly been denominated Animal Flowers; while, from their being capable of propagation by cuttings, and of being muitiplied by divisions, they may, with equal propriety, be designated Salt-water, or Sea Polypuses, and be reckoned among the wonders of the Almighty in the deep.

That these substances resemble polypuses, by the singular property of being multiplied and grafted by slips, experience has put beyond a doubt. The reproductive power of the Barbadoes animal flower is prodigious. Many people coming to see these strange creatures, and occasioning some inconvenience to a person, through whose grounds they were obliged to pass, he resolved to destroy the objects of their curiosity; and that he might do so effectually, caused all the holes, out of which they appeared, to be carefully bored and drilled with an iron instrument, so that we cannot suppose but their bodies must have been entirely crushed to a pulp; nevertheless they appeared again, in a few days, from the very same places.