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these will find Mr. Wraxall's book an easy and interesting commencement. We say commencement, because the subject is immense, and can be pursued in so many directions. Life in the sea presents an astonishing range of created existences totally distinct from all other, however near they may approximate to land forms. They do so pretty closely, and to the very highest in the case of the aquatic mammaliawhales, seals, walruses, &c.

"Of all the creatures that populate the mighty ocean, the Cetacea are the most perfect. Through their internal construction they approximate in many respects to human beings, and their behaviour displays traces of a higher feeling; for the mother loves her cub, defends it in the hour of danger, and is apt to forget her own peril in her passionate attempts to protect it. Like ourselves, they respire through lungs, and possess a double (venous and arterial) heart, through which The anatomical structure of the pectoral fins streams of warm red blood constantly flow. bears a remarkable resemblance to the human arm, as its skeleton is equally composed of a

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ect the imagination, but the interest aching to the living creatures that float those world-encircling waters, that dwell those awful depths, that haunt those terminable winding shores, is of a pracal as well as of an imaginative nature; t are there not fish enough in the sea to ed the whole human race, if that race ere reduced to feed on fish only? Are ere not secrets of science yet to be learned om the denizens of the saline deep? Where the ship that can travel through the water ith the speed of a salmon or a tunny? It has been calculated that the former, in ne hour, covers a span of 86,000 feet; a peed which would enable it to make a ciruit of the globe in a few weeks, if it thought t to rival a Cook or a Magelhaens." Some of our readers may not as yet have een tempted to dip into this line of study;

Life in the Sea; or, the Nature and Habits of Marine Animals. Written and Compiled by Lascellas Vraxall. Price 3s. 6d. London: Houlston and Wright,

Paternoster-row.

shoulder-blade, arm, a two-boned fore-arm, and five parted fingers.""

Surely this strong resemblance, together with the mildness of the Cetacean natures, appeal strongly to us against unnecessary cruelty, such as unthinking uninformed men have been in the habit of practising against them. Wholesale destruction of the mammalia of the northern seas has been for many years rapidly thinning their numbers, and extinguishing some of their most interesting varieties.

RECENT EXTINCTION OF THE RHYTINA.

"The remarkable 'Borkenthier,' or Bark-Beast, which the renowned and unfortunate Steller first discovered and described in Behring's Island in 1741, seems to have been entirely erased from the list of living creatures. This sea-monster, which eight thousand pounds, had a black skin an inch was twenty-three feet in length, and weighed thick, which resembled the warty cracked bark of an old oak, scarcely penetrable with an axe, and, when cut through, was exactly like ebony in polish and colour. In lieu of teeth, it had, at

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La. Shoulder-blade. b. Collar-bone. c. Fore-arm. d. Humerus. e. Dorsal Vertebræ. f. Ribs. g. Bones of the Pelvis. h. Tibia. i. Thigh-bone.

top and bottom, two long quadrangular masticating plates, six inches in length and three in breadth, between which it rubbed the sea-weed, its ordinary food. The Russians kept up such an incessant chase of the defenceless Rhytina, that in 1768, according to Sauer's report, the last specimen was killed in Behring's Island. It has never been found again, despite of repeated researches and inquiries. History records no other instance of an animal so lately known, and so early destroyed. A single masticating plate, and a portion of the skull, now in the St. Petersburg Museum, are the only relics of this once so numerous family."

Much has recently been written in popular periodicals on whales and whale-hunting;

but the seals and walruses of the aretic re

gions are no less eagerly pursued. To the Greenlanders these two last are as valuable 66 'as the reindeer to the Lapps, or the camel to the Bedouins."

"At times, he may be seen watching in his boat, for hours, amid the frost and fog, till a seal appears on the top of the water, which he at once

harpoons; or he waits till the animal comes up to breathe at an air-hole in the ice, and transfixes it with his spear. At times, too, he tries to entrap the sea-calves sunning themselves on the beach, by approaching them stealthily from the sea, and making a rush at them. Now and then he has recourse to stratagem, wraps himself in a sealskin, and imitating, with all the cleverness of a savage, the head-shaking and clumsy movements of the sea-calf, he creeps among his unsuspecting victims."

The sea-birds take rank next after the mammalia of the great deep, and the chief immortalized by Coleridge in his ballad of of them all we take to be that noble bird the "Ancient Mariner" (would that, for the sake of its moral, it were taught to every man, woman, and child in Christendom).

THE ALBATROSS.

"The albatross is the real king of the water, the picture of a hero, who, beneath the most violent storms of evil fortune, preserves the unvarying equanimity of a brave heart. Proudly and nobly

the albatross floats in its element, and defies the
fury of the storm, not touching the water with
even the extremities of its wings. It rises with
the waves, and sinks calmly again into the abyss.
"It is marvellous,' M. de Tessan says, 'how the
albatrosses deride the fury of the unchained
elements, and fly against the most violent wind.'
Our sailors said that they were as easy as if they
were at home: and really this word is character-
istic; for you hardly saw one move in a quarter of
an hour, though they hover in the air. The
albatross exceeds the swan in size. For weeks
and months it will follow a ship. It lives on
animal substances that float on the surface of the
sea; and though it at times sweeps up its food
while flying, it just as frequently folds its wings
and swims round like a gull. If it desire to rise
again, it takes a run, while flapping the water
with its wings, till it has attained the proper
impulse, and found a wave of sufficient height,
from whose crest it springs, and begins anew its
majestic flight across the world of waters."
The cold-blooded reptiles of the sea-

watching enemy might lose its patience long be-
fore the creature required to draw breath, for it
can exist for a long period without fresh air.”
The sea-turtles are of colossal size, and
differ from land tortoises in having fin-like
feet, and a tail which serves as a paddle in
the water. It is remarkable that to lay
their eggs they quit the sea, and travel in
the hottest months, often long distances, to
find suitable sands where the sun may hatch
them; and the first instinctive course of
the new-born turtles is to the element for
which they were designed.

The piscine world teems with marvels, chief of which is the inexhaustible supply of eatable fish.

THE HERRING AND ITS MYSTERIES.

"There is a grand mystery attaching to the herring, a fish we all know so well; for the question whence it comes and whither it goes stil

EUNICE SANGUINEA, OR SEA-WORMS.-(See p. 172.)

anciently its masters-are now reduced to tortoises (or turtles), water-snakes, and imaginary sea-serpents; for crocodiles and alligators have retired into the rivers and morasses of the tropical zone.

DEFENSIVE ARMOUR OF THE TURTLE.

"The structure of the turtle offers many curious points. In a most extraordinary manner, the vertebræ, ribs, and breast-bone are so dilated, that they form a bony shell around the entire body of the animal. This is the sole protection nature has afforded these animals against the attacks of their foes: they possess neither speed for flight, nor any weapon with which to defend themselves effectually; but so soon as a suspicious animal approaches them, they conceal themselves under their thick covering, and oppose to the attack the passive resistance of a coat of armour impenetrable by tooth or claw. The majority of the animals that pursue the turtles have an insurmountable difficulty in turning them... and a

remains unanswered. This most valuable of all fish appears in shoals extending for miles, often pressed so close together that a spear stands upthem, and sends its countless legions into all the right in the living ground, when thrown among fiords, lochs, gulphs, coves, and bays, from Norway to Ireland, and from the Orkneys to Normandy. Countless marine birds thin their ranks during the summer; enormous armies of dolphins, seals, codfish, haddocks, and sharks devour them by millions, and yet their capture supports entire peoples.

"When the time for their appearance draws on, the herring boats set cut from every northern port, equipped with enormous nets, often 1,200 feet in length. The yarn of which they are made is so thick that it sinks with its own weight, and does not require to have stones fastened to the bottom, for it has been found that the herring is more easily caught in a loosely hanging net. The upper end is kept floating on the water by means of empty barrels, and the whole is fastened to the boat by long cords. The herrings are principally

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caught at night, and to prevent any collision, or perhaps to attract the fish, each boat has one or two lights. Off Yarmouth bank, where several thousand boats are often fishing at one time, these ever-crossing lights produce a fairy-like scene. The meshes of the net are accurately calculated to the size of the herring; just wide enough to let the head through to the gill flap, but not the pectoral fins. Thus the poor fish entangles itself in the large, perpendicular wall which human craft has placed before it, and as it can neither advance nor retreat, it remains hanging till the fisherman pulls the net in again. In this manner such enormous quantities are sometimes captured, that we hardly dare to quote their numbers. A Dieppe fisherman caught, in one night, 280,000 herrings, and threw an equal number back into the sea. At times large boats have been compelled to cut away their nets; for they almost pulled them down by their weight."

After fishes, the next step downwards of the ladder of sea life is the Crustaceans (lobsters, crabs, prawns) "legions of which are found on every coast, or populate the waste of waters far away from land." And next we have the Annelids or ringed

sea-worms.

BEAUTY OF SEA-WORMS.

"As regards their external appearance, many of these marine Annelids are among the most glorious creatures of the animal world. The rainbow tints of the humming bird, and the glistening metallic lustre of the richly-ornamented beetles, are found here again. Most distinguished for beauty are those varieties which live in freedom, which crawl with a serpentine motion through the fissures of the rocks, or move along the bed of the sea, in the sand or

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great enthusiasm; sooner look at our Annelids- Strange and hideous as it appears to us, what else do they require to dazzle the eye?"this wonderful creature is formed of two And yet they timidly retreat from our gaze; and halves evidently divided from each other;" only a few persons know the secret marvels which are concealed under the weed-covered rocks, or in and, "as the feet extend round the head, it walks or crawls on its head in the strictest sense of the term."

the sand of the ocean bed.'

How SEA-SHELLS ARE FORMED.

The Molluscs, or soft animals to which conchylia, snails, and cuttle-fish belong, present in sea-shells marvels of beauty of a kind more popularly known and appre

ciated.

The Asteroids, or star fish, are familiarly known; they are found in every sea. The most beautiful is

THE FEATHER STAR, Which is met with from Norway to the Mediterranean, generally at a depth of ten "Nature never makes rapid leaps from one type to twenty fathoms. "Its natatory moveof organization to another; hence we see the naked Molluscs passing gradually through inter-ments resemble those of the Medusa, as it mediate forms to the varieties provided with a alternately projects and contracts its long perfect spiral shell. At first a rudimentary in- plumed arms, and it darts up even more ternal or external shell is formed, which protects rapidly than the former animals, back first, merely the most important organs; then its cir- from the depths. On being killed in soft cumference increases, step by step, till at last it water or spirits of wine, it dyes the liquid a handsome purple colour."

covers the whole animal; and now the first traces of a spiral are formed, which is more and more distinctly stamped, till we come to the perfect snail-shell."

The jelly fish, though composed almost entirely of water, and in the present state

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