Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 January 1884 — Gardens of the Sea. [ARTICLE]

Gardens of the Sea.

Among the many curious analogies born of.inodern investigation, none are more interesting than those showing striking eases of parallelism in the habits and customs of animals whoso environments are totat.lv dissimilar. The ocean bed seems peopled with forms so resembling those of land that a modification of structure to conform with their surroundings alone appears to lie the point of difference. In drifting over the reefs of onr southern border, this resemblance between the creatures of land and sea is extremely striking. The gardens of the lower work! .ako»BsLia- lavish growth* trees;shrubs, waving vines are all reproduced in the wondrous forms of the sea. Here a forest of coral branches (Madrepora i raise their myriads of bristling points, each flowered by a delicate polyp, and presenting a rich olive-green tint in contrast to the deep bine of the channel upqu whose banks they grow. Pure as cjsrysfal. the water seems to intensify the beauty of the objects, even in the. greater depths;. gayly bedecked fishes move lazily about, rising and falling among the living branches. jHiising, perhaps, to pluck some morsei from aV limb, in all their motions re.ninding us of the birds of the shore. : These gorgeous parrot-fishes are the snn-fishes of the sea; wondrous tints—-azure-blue, golden-yellow, and red—mark them. Some appear irrideseent and bathed in metalic tints, as ii encased in burnished armor, while many more, in modest garb, fonnd in oar colder waters of the North, call to mind the robin and thrush, those weeome harbingers of spring. Bnt it is not in their color alone that the fishes resemble the birds: it is in the home-life and love of offspring that we find a close resemblance- Many ora nestbnilders, erecting structures as complicated as those of the birds, and eqalhng them in design and finish.—C. P. Hoider, » llarj*fr's Magasine,