The First[-fifth] Reader ...

Smooth down my cares and calmly breathe;
And, never sad with others' sadness,
And never glad with others' gladness,
Listen, unstirred, to knell or chime,

And, lapped in quiet, bide my time.

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.

LXXVIII. - THE OCEAN AND ITS LIFE.

WONDROUS world is the world of the great sea. There are deep abysses, filled with huge rocks, spectral ruins of large ships, and the corpses of men. There lie, half-covered with lime and slime, the green decaying gun, and the precious box, filled with the gold of Peru's snow-covered Alps, and countless skeletons, gathered from every race and every clime.

2. There moulders the bald skull of the brave sea-captain, by the side of the broken armor of gigantic turtles ; the whaler's harpoon rests, peacefully, near the tooth of the whale; thousands of fishes dwell in huge bales of costly silks from India, and, over them, pass, in silent crowds, myriads of diminutive infusoria. Here, the sea foams and frets, restlessly, up curiously-shaped cliffs, and oddly-formed rocks; there, it moves sluggishly over large plains of white, shining sand.

3. In the morning the tidal waves break in grim fury against the bald peaks of submarine Alps, or pass, in hissing streams, through ancient forests on their side; in the evening, they glide noiselessly over bottomless abysses, as if afraid lest they, also, may sink down into the eternal night below, from which rises distant thunder, and the locked-up waters roar and rage like evil spirits, chained in the vast deep.

4. The ocean is a vast charnel-house. There are mill

ions and millions of mouldering animals, piled up, layer upon layer, in huge masses, or forming mile-long banks. For no peace is found below, under the thin, transparent veil there reigns endless murder, wild warfare, and fierce bloodshed.

5. Infinite, unquenchable hatred seems to dwell in the cold, unfeeling deep.. Destruction, only, maintains life in the boundless world of the ocean. Lions, tigers, and wolves reach a gigantic size in its vast caverns, and, day after day, destroy whole generations of smaller animals.

6. Polypi and medusæ, in countless numbers, spread their nets, catching the thoughtless radiates by tens of thousands; and the huge whale swallows, at one gulp, millions of minute but living creatures. The sword-fish and the sea-lion hunt the elephant and the rhinoceros of the Pacific, and tiny parasites dart upon the tunny-fish, to dwell in myriads in his thick layers of fat.

7. All are hunting, killing, murdering; but the strife is silent; no war-cry is heard, no burst of anguish disturbs the eternal silence, no shouts of triumph rise through the crystal waves to the world of light.

8. The battles are fought in deep, still secrecy; only, now and then, the parting waves disclose the bloody scene, for an instant, or the dying whale throws his enormous carcass high into the air, driving the water up in lofty columns, capped with foam, and tinged with blood.

9. Ceaseless as that warfare is, it does not leave the ocean's depth a waste, a scene of desolation. On the contrary, we find that the sea, the most varied and the most wonderful part of the creation, where nature still keeps some of her profoundest secrets, -is teeming with life. "Things innumerable, both great and small, are there."

10. When Captain Ross explored the bottom of the Arctic sea, he dropped his lead to a depth of six thousand

feet, and brought up living animalcules. Even at a depth exceeding the height of our loftiest mountains, the water is alive with countless hosts of diminutive phosphoric creatures, which, when attracted to the surface, convert every wave into a crest of light, and the wide ocean into a sea of fire.

11. It is well known that the abundance of these minute beings, and of the animal matter supplied by their rapid decomposition, is such that the sea water itself becomes a nutritious fluid' to many of the largest dwellers in the ocean. Still, they all have their own homes, and even their own means of locomotion.

12. They are not bound to certain regions of that great country below the ocean's waters. They travel far and fast; currents, unknown to man, carry them, in vast masses, from the Pole to the Equator, and often from Pole to Pole, so that the whale must travel with locomotive speed, to follow the meduse of the Arctic to the seas of the Antilles, if he will not dispense with his daily food. How strange a chase! The giant of the seas, racing, in furious haste, after hardly visible, faintly colored balls of jelly!

13. The fish, now singly, now in shoals, are constantly seen moving through the ocean. The delicate mackerel travels towards the south, the small, elegant sardine of the Mediterranean moves in spring, westward, and returns to the east in the fall. The sturgeon of northern seas sails, lonely, up the large rivers of the continent of Europe, and has been found in the very heart of Germany, under the shadow of the famous cathedral of Strasbourg.

14. Triangular masses of salmon press up nearly all northern rivers, and are sometimes so numerous, so closely packed, that they actually impede the current of large rivers. Before their arrival, countless millions of

herrings leave the same waters; but where their home is, man has not yet learned.

15. In the spring months, vast banks of herring, two or three miles wide, and from twenty to thirty miles long, suddenly appear; and so dense are the crowds, so great is their depth, that lances and harpoons, thrown at random among them, do not sink, but remain standing upright. What numbers are devoured by sharks and birds of prey is not known; what immense quantities are caught along the coast, to be spread as manure on the fields inland, is beyond all calculation; and yet, it has been ascertained that over a thousand millions alone are annually salted for winter consumption!

16. The life of the ocean is not only gigantic in numbers, but, often, in all its dimensions. Whales, a hundred feet in length and more, are the largest of all animals on earth; five times as long as the elephant, the giant of the firm land. Turtles weighing a thousand pounds are found in more than one sea.

17. The rocky islands of the southern Arctic, alone, furnish a yearly supply of a million of sea-lions, sea-cows, and seals. Hugę birds rise from the foam-covered waves, their homes never seen by human eye, their young ones Islands are formed, and offal of generations of

bred in lands unknown to man. mountains raised, by the mere small birds. Yet nature is here also greatest in her smallest creations. For instance, how fine must be the texture of sinews and muscles, of nerves and blood-vessels, in animals that never reach the size of a pea, or even a pin's head.-M. Schele De Vere.