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Updated: July 3, 2025
Shells, sea-plants, coral, and fishes, and the slightest movement of the latter, even to the vibration of a tiny fin! or the gentle opening of the gills in respiration, could be seen with perfect distinctness in this transparent medium.
Tom and Retta were fond of watching the curious fish and sea-plants in the glass aquarium tanks on shore also, but their happiest time was when they gathered shells on the beach. They never found out the names of more than those of the limpet, turban, and scallop, though they picked up baskets full of tiny pink and white beauties, all frail and of many kinds.
These nulliporae, which are hard, very simply-organized sea-plants, play an analogous and important part in protecting the upper surfaces of coral-reefs, behind and within the breakers, where the true corals, during the outward growth of the mass, become killed by exposure to the sun and air.
But the latter do not live like sea-plants, in a medium which contains all their elements and surrounds with appropriate nourishment every part of their organs; on the contrary, they require two media, of which one, namely the soil, contains those essential elements which are absent from the medium surrounding them, i.e. the atmosphere.
The reply to this was, that the Coral became hard as soon as it reached the air. Then, of course, it was found that Coral was as hard under water as above it, and the question was still unanswered. Sponges, too, were thought to be sea-plants for many, many years; though some people even said that they must really be made of hardened sea-foam!
M. Ehrenberg has likewise detected microscopic sea-plants in the chalk. The distinctive feature of the uppermost chalk beds in England, is the presence of flint nodules. These are generally disposed in layers parallel to each other.
Twenty years later, a pupil of Marsigli, the young Marseilles physician, Peyssonel, conceived the desire to study these singular sea-plants, and was sent by the French Government on a mission to the Mediterranean for that purpose.
The sailor walked unchallenged through the gate, and found himself in the great street of the city. Along the broad avenue grew giant sea-plants with brown leaves, set out in rows like trees; and through the foliage which moved heavily in the currents, little fish darted like birds.
Its great analogy to several sea-plants, with adiantum leaves, especially the genus caulerpa of M. Lamoureux, of which the Fucus proliter of Forskael is one of the numerous species, engaged us to rank it provisionally among the sea-wracks, and give it the name of Fucus vitifolius. The vine-leaved fucus presents a physiological phenomenon of the greatest interest.
Though on the river, it is a half-marine place, with the typical sea-plants growing on the saltings by the shore. In summer I noticed that the graves below the grey sea-eaten, storm-furrowed walls of the church have wreaths of sea-lavender laid upon them. But there is not the same rich carpet of sea-flowers as at Wells or Blakeney.
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