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Now, could we remove the ocean waters we should find that there are hills and dales as upon the continents; and generally the slope of the land is continued from the inland mountain summit to the bottom of the ocean vale. In places where high lands reach down to the coast, the immediate depth of the sea is proportionally great; but wherever the surface rises gently landwards, the sea-bed continues with a corresponding slope downwards. Were the ocean waters in reality quite absent, so as to leave the whole slope exposed to the air, we should expect to see the lower parts of it clothed with vegetation in zones, the species of plants differing from those in the upper zones. But the lower parts of these mountain slopes are in fact beneath the waters, and it has not been given us to perambulate the submarine meads, or to force our way leisurely through dense thickets of algae, as we can traverse the glens and climb the mountains of the dry land. Is it possible to ascertain whether, beneath the waves, any distribution of life occurs corresponding at all to that which prevails above them? Yes, in spite of natural impediments, the thing has been done; and there are found to be zones of life in descending from the shore, as there would be in ascending a mountain, and provinces of life with their geographical limits, as there would be in going from country to country.

Let us speak first of the horizontal distribution. What beautiful submarine landscapes are we permitted to distinguish as we sail over the sea when the water is clear and transparent! M. De Quatrefages speaks with enthusiasm of those on the coast of Sicily. "The surface of the waters, smooth and even like a mirror, enabled the eye to penetrate to an incredible depth, and to recognise the smallest objects. Deceived by this wonderful transparency, it often occurred during my first excursion, that I wished to seize some annelide or mudusa which seemed to swim but a few inches from the surface. Then the boatman smiled, took a net fastened to a long pole, and to my great astonishment, plunged it deep into the water before it could attain the object which I had supposed to be within my reach. The admirable clearness of the waters produced another deception of a most agreeable kind. Leaning over the boat, we glided over plains, dales, and hillocks, which, in some places naked, and in others carpeted with green or with brownish shrubbery, reminded us of the prospects of the land. . . . Strangely-formed animals peopled these submarine regions, and lent them a peculiar character. Fishes, sometimes isolated like the sparrows of our groves, or uniting in flocks like our pigeons or swallows, roamed among the crags, wandered through the thicket of the sea-plants, and shot away like arrows as our boat passed over them. Caryophyllias, gorgonias, and a thousand other zoophytes, enfolded their sensitive petals, and could hardly be distinguished from the real plants with whose fronds their branches intertwined."

The localisation of marine fauna and

flora, says Agassiz, is as distinct as that of terrestrial animals and plants, and late investigations have done much to explain the connection of this distribution with physical conditions. A glance at the coast of North America will show to what a variety of physical influences the animals living along its shores are subjected. On the shores of Baffin's Bay-especially on the inner coast of Greenland, where the glaciers push their way down to the very brink of the water-we shall hardly expect to find a very abundant littoral fauna. On its western shore, where the ice does not advance so far, and a greater surface of rock is exposed, the circumstances are more favourable to the development of animal life. Here abound the winged molluscs (pteropods), the whale-feed, as fishermen call them, because the whales devour them voraciously. Along the shore of Labrador and Newfoundland the coast is wholly rocky, and especially about Newfoundland, it is deeply indented with bays. Here there is ample opportunity for the growth of certain kinds of animals in sheltered nooks. The number of species is, however, much greater along the shores of Maine, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, than in Labrador, owing, no doubt, to the milder climate. Farther south, from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras, the character of the coast changes, becoming more sandy and flat. With this new character of the shore, the fanna is also greatly modified. South of Cape Cod come in a kind of scallops and periwinkle, very different from the larger scallops found on the coast of Maine and the British provinces; while an entirely new set of crustacea and worms make their appearance on this more sandy bottom. These instances may suffice to show that there is a geographical distribution of life in the sea as well as upon land. The causes which confine certain creatures to certain localities are, in many cases, easy to trace. The warmth or coldness of the sea, its tranquil or disturbed state, abundance or scarcity of food, solidity or softness of the ground, sufficiently explain why many species of marine animals are abundant in some localities and wanting in others. In many cases, however, the causes which regulate the distribution of sea-animals are still enveloped in darkness. It is not known why the teaplant confined to a small corner of Asia, nor can it be understood why coral reefs should be formed in some parts of the tropical seas, and not in other parts to all appearances just as favourably situated.

The widest oceans abound in organic life at and near their surfaces; the tropical seas teem with small molluscs, crustaceous and luminous creatures, &c., while in cold latitudes countless millions of the genus Beroe exist, to say nothing of jellyfish, zoophytes, &c. The coral animal constructs its reefs near the surface, never going beyond a depth of twenty or thirty fathoms, at a greater depth all coral is dead.

* Fauna means all the animals of a district; flora, all the plants.

On the other hand, Sir John Ross, in his Arctic voyage, 1819, records that living seaworms or annelids were brought up during his deep-sea soundings from depths varying from 192 to 1,000 fathoms. At 800 fathoms' depth he found a beautiful Caput Medusa, two feet in its full expansion, which is still to be seen in the British Museum. A small starfish was found attached to the line, below the point marking 800 fathoms. Animals of a higher degree of organisation, such as molluscs and crustaceans, were also procured by Sir John during the same expedition, at rather less depths, in Baffin's Bay. Dr. Wallich ascertained that multitudinous minute forms exist off Africa, in a free swimming condition, in various regions of the ocean, and at various depths from the surface. Mr. Gosse was examining a sounding from the bottom of the ocean at the depth of 2,000 fathoms, on the exact spot where the Atlantic telegraph gave way in 1865, when he discovered a great number of "twilight monads," the simplest of all animals belonging to the Infusoria.

It thus appears that there is life at all depths, and we have only now to ascertain whether the sea-creatures find all depths equally agreeable, or whether they are limited to zones, as vegetation is on a mountain side. The first important investigations on this subject were made by Oersted, a distinguished Danish naturalist, who undertook a complete topographical survey of the coast near which he lived, carrying his soundings to a depth of some twelve fathoms, and found that both the fauna and flora of the shore (the animal and vegetable existences) were divided according to the depth of the water into bands or zones of life. His observations were, however, limited, not extending beyond the neighbourhood of his home. It is to Edward Forbes, the great English naturalist, whose short life was so rich in results to science, that we owe a more complete and extensive investigation of the whole subject. Aided by a friend, Captain McAndrew, who placed his yacht at his disposal, he made a series of observations on the British, Scandinavian, and Danish coasts, and explored also with the same object the shores of the Mediterranean. He collected a vast amount of material, and the results of his labours have formed the basis of all subsequent generalisations upon this subject.

Dredging diligently and carefully, comparing the results, he found that the animals brought up admitted of classification in zones or bands as follows:-(1.) The Littoral zone, or the tract which lies between the high and low water marks, which is of course variable in its extent, depending for its dimensions on the amount of rise and fall of the tides. But whether it be only a few inches broad, as in the Mediterranean, or beyond thirty feet in extent, as in some more tidal seas, its forms of life are equally characteristic. It is inhabited by animals and plants capable of enduring periodical exposure to the air, to the glare of light, the heat of the sun, the pelting of rain, and able to stand an occasional flood of fresh

water when the tide has receded. (2.) Succeeding the shore-band or littoral zone, and extending to a depth of from seven to fifteen fathoms, is the Laminarian zone, or region of the great tangle sea-weeds, which form miniature forests. This zone above all others swarms with life, and is the chief residence of fishes, molluscs, crustaceans, and invertebrata of all classes, remarkable for brightness and variety of colouring. Here, says Mr. Godwin-Austen, is the chosen haunt of the nudibranchiate molluscs, animals of exceedingly delicate texture, extraordinary shapes, elegance of organs and vividness of painting. Their bodies exhibit hues of a brilliancy and intensity such as can match the most gorgeous setting of a painter's palette. Vermilion red, intense crimson, pale rose, golden yellow, luscious orange, rich purple, the deepest and the brightest blues, even vivid greens and densest blacks are common tints, separate or combined, disposed in infinite varieties of elegant patterns, in this singular tribe. Our handsomest fishes are congregated here, the wrasses especially, some of which are truly gorgeous in their painting. (3.) To the laminarian succeeds the Coralline zone, in which we find the greatest variety and abundance of the corneous zoophytes-arborescent animals which seem here to take the place of plants. Here, too, we find the great assemblage of carnivorous mollusca, whelks prowling in great numbers, bivalves of remarkable clegance buried in multitudes beneath the gravels and muddy sands, and spider-crabs plentifully congregated, with many other peculiar crustaceans. As a natural consequence of this well-furnished table, fishes abound, and many of our deep-sea and white fisheries owe their value to the zoological features of the coralline zone. (4.) The fourth and lowest of the regions of depth in the British seas was termed by Forbes, the region of deep-sea corals, on account of the great stormy zoophytes characteristic of it. Many sea-stars and sea-urchins are likewise found in this zone, in the depths of which the number of peculiar creatures is few, though sufficient to give it a marked character.

As we descend deeper and deeper in the fourth region, its inhabitants become fewer and fewer, indicating, it was thought by Forbes, our approach towards a silent and desolate abyss, where all life dies and death lives. Ile inferred that at a certain depth the weight of water became too great to be endured by animals, and that the ocean beyond this line, like the land beyond the line of perpetual snow, was barren of life. For some years his theory was very generally accepted, and the results of Darwin's and Dana's investigations, showing that corals could not live at a depth exceeding twenty or thirty fathoms, seemed to confirm it. But quite recently, as we have seen, the soundings in connection with the laying of telegraphic cables, to say nothing of the wires themselves, have brought us tidings of life at greater depths. In the Mediterranean and in the Red Sea, from depths of 1,800 to 2,000 fathoms living animals have been brought up en

the telegraphic wires, not of doubtful infusorial | from the Adriatic, and D'Orbigny reckoned no character, hovering on the borderland between less than 3,849,000 in a pound of sand front animal and vegetable life, but of considerable the Antilles. The "twilight monad," that size, as for instance one of two kinds of crus- round transparent speck, 200th part of all tacea, cockles, stocks of bryozoa and tubes of inch in length, is found in the ocean, and it is annelids. When the cable between France the smallest animal known. and Algiers was taken up from a depth of 1,800 fathoms, there came with it an oyster, cockle-shells, annelid tubes, bryozoa and seafans. As these animals were growing upon it, there could be no doubt that they had lived at this depth, and since they are carnivorous they tell also of the existence of other animals with them, on which they feed. This discovery alone (says Agassiz) shows how much remains to be done before we shall fully understand the laws of marine life. But we already have ample evidence that the same beneficent order controls the distribution of animals in the ocean as on the land, appointing to all its inhabitants their fitting home in the dim waste of waters.

Forbes also established the fact that in the sea as well as on the land the living forms peculiar to one locality for a great many ages, may at length through a change of conditions migrate to a new district. If savage peoples may be driven from their homes by hunger or love of conquest, if the greater part of the animals of England came from France before the countries were separated by the Straits of Dover, the sea-creatures may be allowed to seek new homes when their old ones become too cold through the access of fresh currents from the poles, or too shallow through the upheaval of the ocean bed. It was the opinion of Forbes that the inhabitants of the British seas have immigrated to these parts at different dates, but all of them since the epoch called by geologists the meiocene.

The seas furnish us with both the largest and the minutest forms of life: with the whale

and the shark on the one hand; with forami

nifera and monads on the other. While wandering on the beach take a handful of driftsand and examine it through a magnifying glass. You will not seldom find, among the coarser grains of inorganic silica, a number of the most elegant shells, some formed like ancient amphora, others like the nautilus, but all shaped in their minuteness with a perfection which no human artist could hope to equal in the largest size. Plaucus counted 6,000 of these creatures in an ounce of sand

A no less remarkable thing is the abundance of life in the seas. Even in the polar regions, which must be in many respects the least favourable to life, arctic navigators have observed a remarkable profusion. The whale, the narwal, walrus, seal, and herring, with crabs, shrimps, and animalculæ, &c., make up a pretty good list. 20,000 square miles of the polar ocean have their waters darkened by the presence of medusa, whose numbers therefore must almost defy calculation, though Scoresby estimated them at 23,888,000,000,000,000. The larger creatures multiply almost at the same rate. The marvel of the hen laying 200 eggs in the year is nothing in comparison; and since man is benefited by the large provision, we must acknowledge the hand of the good all-Father in the matter.

Since many of the sea-creatures require carbonate of lime (chalk), silica (flint), and other substances from which to construct their shells, we are prepared to find that the sea water contains these substances in solution. The salts of the sea taken altogether, form about three and a half per cent. of its weight, and consist principally of common table salt, and the sulphates and carbonates of magnesia and lime. But as the sea continually receives the drainage of the land, and every river washes down some of the soil or rock over which t flows, there is scarcely a single elementary body of which traces are not to be found in the deep. Lead, copper, and silver have been detected; tons of these metals existing in the vast volume of the ocean, together with iodine, fluorine, &c., and arsenic enough to poison every living thing.

Having thus considered the home of the seacreatures, we shall in the next chapter make closer acquaintance with the animals themselves.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll.
-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime-
The image of eternity.

BOYS AT CHEQUASSET; OR, "A LITTLE LEAVEN."

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE "CAYWORTHYS."

CHAPTER I.

OFF TO THE COUNTRY.

HE Osburn family was in all the bustle

THE

of moving. Delightful bustle! better than any possible perfect order to ten-yearold Johnnie, who stood, at seven in the morning, on his father's door-step, in Pinckney Street, watching the great van, or furniture. waggon, upon which was piled, and being piled, an apparently confused mass of boxes, baskets, chairs, tables, bedding, and all the multifarious plenishing of a long-established household.

Behind him, doors stood open away throngh the house; and bare floors, littered with straw, from the packing of the big crates in the china-closet, bundles of carpeting, trunks of clothing, buckets and barrels from the storeroom, occupying every possible bit of space, offered a strange vista to the view.

John had not been standing still long. He had been up and "helping," since six o'clock; sometimes quite effectually, and sometimes the wrong way.

"We've got to go to-night, father," he said, gleefully, as Mr. Osburn came out to the door-way, "for the beds are all off." "Yes," his father answered;

sleep in Chequasset to-night."

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'But, father," said the boy, again, "how old everything looks! It seems to me nothing looks nice, as it did in the rooms."

"The effect of disorder, Johnnie-of things being out of their proper places and use. But, somehow, it seems to me that Johnnie himself looks a little out of his element. No collar, and hair beseeching for a brush!”

"Yes, father; but I was in such a hurry; and I couldn't be very nice to-day, you know." "Ah, why not? At least why not begin by being nice? Here comes your mother. I don't see that she has found it necessary to leave off her collar, or that her hair is not as smooth as usual."

Oh, but mother always looks nice! And her hair has got used to keeping smooth. don't believe anything ever does rumple it."

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"Give yours a little of the same discipline, then, since you can see what education can do." Johnnie disappeared among the packages, and up the stairs.

Mrs. Osburn joined her husband, for a moment, at the door.

"Shall you go down to the counting-room this morning ?" she asked.

Oh, yes; I must be there for an hour or two, at least," he replied.

"Then, will you remember to call in at Blake's on your way, and tell them to send up that little wardrobe, immediately? ought to go with the next load."

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They promised to send it early; but I'll look in and remind them of it. How soon do you think you'll be ready to go yourselves ?"

"Not until afternoon. I made arrangements there, as far as possible, yesterday; and now I must stop until the house is cleared."

A couple of hours later, John was standing on the side-walk, in the midst of a little curious knot of neighbour-children, who, with books in hand, were on their way to school, but had stopped to listen eagerly to his glowing description and anticipation of his new country home, thinking what a very lucky boy John Osburn was, to be out of school, and exempt from duty, and moving out of town, too!

"I suppose you won't go to any new school till after vacation?" said Charlie Robbins. "I don't know. I guess not. Hallo! here comes another waggon! Furniture in it, too. I wonder if folks are coming to move in, before we get out!"

A cart drew up behind the one that stood to be loaded, before the door.

"Mr. Osburn's?" inquired the driver.
"Yes, sir," answered Johnnie.

The man unfastened the tail-board of his waggon.

"Lend a hand here, somebody, will you? Where's this to go?"

John sprang up to the steps, and found his mother at the foot of the stairs.

"Mother! there's some furniture come! What is it? The man's in a hurry."

Just then, two men came out from the front parlour, each carrying two piano legs, which they set down in the corner of the vestibule.

"Stand back, John; or run out! They are coming with the piano, now. What did you say? Some furniture come? Oh! the little wardrobe for your room. Tell the man to wait a moment, and they will put it in after the piano."

Well, Johnnie had enough, now, I think, to crown the day's delight! A little wardrobe for his own room! Charlie Robbins had really nothing more to say. They could only walk round and round the waggon, looking at it on every side, and seeing very little indeed, for it was wound about with coarse cloth. But there was do doubt in either of their minds that when it should be unpacked, it would prove to be a very perfect and wonderful wardrobe indeed.

"And oh, mother!" cried Johnnie, as soon as he found a chance to speak to her, "I shall keep my things so nice in it, you know!"

"No, Johnnie, I don't know, yet," replied Mrs. Osburn

John's strength of mind was to be tried still further, before the end of the day, with joyful surprise.

As the family alighted from the 4-20 train, due at 5.5 at Chequasset, they were met by Mr. Osburn, who had gone down by a previous train, and led by him to a pretty, darkgreen carryall;* drawn by a long-tailed black horse, and therein comfortably placed, before they had so much as found time to ask questions.

John jumped up, last, to the front seat, with his father.

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Well, I thought so. And since you haven't any objection, we may as well settle it between us. And I hope we shall have the same horse a great many years. I expect so, or I shouldn't have bought him."

John couldn't jump up, or clap his hands, or throw up his cap, for he was busy with the reins. But a great flash of delight jumped from his heart to his eyes, and from them up to his father's face; and after a breath or two, he just said, in an indescribable sort of emphatic tone,

"Well, that is good!

And so Blackbird was voted into the family at once, name and all; and so, too, after a little drive of five minutes, they were all safely set down at the door of a plain, pleasant, old-fashioned looking house, with a great front-yard, and a long piazza; and John never thought of his room, or his new wardrobe, or the hundred things he had been in such a hurry to look after inside, till he had walked round and round the horse, and patted him on the nose, and called him by his name a dozen times, and at last, by his father's desire, had once more jumped upon the seat, and driven him down the avenue, in triumph, to his stable.

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