We are often held spellbound by the majesty of mountains, and indeed a
lofty peak forever capped with snow, or pouring forth smoke and ashes, is
impressive beyond all terrestrial things. But the ocean yields to nothing
in its grandeur, in its age, in its ceaseless movement, and the question
remains forever unanswered, "Who shall sound the mysteries of the sea?"
Before the most ancient of mountains rose from the heart of the earth, the
waves of the sea rolled as now, and though the edges of the continents
shrink and expand, bend into bays or stretch out into capes, always
through all the ages the sea follows and laps with ripples or booms with
breakers unceasingly upon the shore.
Whether considered from the standpoint of the scientist, the mere
curiosity of the tourist, or the keen delight of the enthusiastic lover of
Nature, the shore of the sea--its sands and waters, its ever-changing
skies and moods--is one of the most interesting spots in the world. The
very bottom of the deep bays near shore--dark and eternally silent,
prisoned under the restless waste of waters--is thickly carpeted with
strange and many-coloured forms of animal and vegetable life. But the
beaches and tide-pools over which the moon-urged tides hold sway in their
ceaseless rise and fall, teem with marvels of Nature's handiwork, and
every day are restocked and replanted with new living objects, both arctic
and tropical offerings of each heaving tidal pulse.
Here on the northeastern shores of our continent one may spend days of
leisure or delightful study among the abundant and ever changing variety
of wonderful living creatures. It is not unlikely that the enjoyment and
absolute novelty of this new world may enable one to look on these as some
of the most pleasant days of life. I write from the edge of the restless
waters of Fundy, but any rock-strewn shore will duplicate the marvels.
At high tide the surface of the Bay is unbroken by rock or shoal, and
stretches glittering in the sunlight from the beach at one's feet to where
the New Brunswick shore is just visible, appearing like a low bluish cloud
on the horizon. At times the opposite shore is apparently brought nearer
and made more distinct by a mirage, which inverts it, together with any
ships which are in sight. A brig may be seen sailing along keel upward, in
the most matter-of-fact way. The surface may anon be torn by those fearful
squalls for which Fundy is noted, or, calm as a mirror, reflect the blue
sky with an added greenish tinge, troubled only by the gentle alighting of
a gull, the splash of a kingfisher or occasional osprey, as these dive for
their prey, or the ruffling which shows where a school of mackerel is
passing. This latter sign always sends the little sailing dories hurrying
out, where they beat back and forth, like shuttles travelling across a
loom, and at each turn a silvery struggling form is dragged into the
boat.
A little distance along the shore the sandy beach ends and is replaced by
huge bare boulders, scattered and piled in the utmost confusion. Back of
these are scraggly spruces, with branches which have been so long blown
landwards that they have bent and grown altogether on that
side,--permanent weather-vanes of Fundy's storms. The very soil in which
they began life was blown away, and their gnarled weather-worn roots hug
the rocks, clutching every crevice as a drowning man would grasp an oar.
On the side away from the bay two or three long, thick roots stretch far
from each tree to the nearest earth-filled gully, sucking what scanty
nourishment they can, for strength to withstand the winter's gales yet
another year or decade. Beach-pea and sweet marsh lavender tint the sand,
and stunted fringed orchids gleam in the coarse grass farther inland. High
up among the rocks, where there is scarcely a handful of soil, delicate
harebells sway and defy the blasts, enduring because of their very pliancy
and weakness.
If we watch awhile we will see a line of blackish seaweed and wet sand
appearing along the edge of the water, showing that the tide has turned
and begun to recede. In an hour it has ebbed a considerable distance, and
if we clamber down over the great weather-worn rocks the hardy advance
guard of that wonderful world of life under the water is seen. Barnacles
whiten the top of every rock which is reached by the tide, although the
water may cover them only a short time each day. But they flourish here in
myriads, and the shorter the chance they have at the salt water the more
frantically their little feathery feet clutch at the tiny food particles
which float around them. These thousands of tiny turreted castles are
built so closely together that many are pressed out of shape, paralleling
in shape as in substance the inorganic crystals of the mineral kingdom.
The valved doors are continually opening and partly closing, and if we
listen quietly we can hear a perpetual shuss! shuss! Is it the creaking of
the tiny hinges? As the last receding wave splashes them, they shut their
folding doors over a drop or two and remain tightly closed, while perhaps
ten hours of sunlight bake them, or they glisten in the moonlight for the
same length of time, ready at the first touch of the returning water to
open wide and welcome it.
The thought of their life history brings to mind how sadly they retrogress
as they grow, hatching as minute free-swimming creatures like tiny
lobsters, and gradually changing to this plant-like life, _sans_ eyes,
_sans_ head, _sans_ most everything except a stomach and a few pairs of
feathery feet to kick food into it. A few pitiful traces of nerves are
left them. What if there were enough ganglia to enable them to dream of
their past higher life, in the long intervals of patient waiting!
A little lower down we come to the zone of mussels,--hanging in clusters
like some strange sea-fruit. Each is attached by strands of thin silky
cables, so tough that they often defy our utmost efforts to tear a
specimen away. How secure these creatures seem, how safe from all harm,
and yet they have enemies which make havoc among them. At high tide fishes
come and crunch them, shells and all, and multitudes of carnivorous snails
are waiting to set their file-like tongues at work, which mercilessly
drill through the lime shells, bringing death in a more subtle but no less
certain form. Storms may tear away the support of these poor mollusks, and
the waves dash them far out of the reach of the tides, while at low water,
crows and gulls use all their ingenuity to get at their toothsome flesh.
There are no ant-hills in the sea, but when we turn over a large stone and
see scores upon scores of small black shrimps scurrying around, the
resemblance to those insects is striking. These little creatures quickly
hitch away on their sides, getting out of sight in a remarkably short
time.
The tide is going down rapidly, and following it step by step novel sights
meet the eye at every turn, and we begin to realise that in this narrow
strip, claimed alternately by sea and land, which would be represented on
a map by the finest of hair-lines, there exists a complete world of
animated life, comparing in variety and numbers with the life in that
thinner medium, air. We climb over enormous boulders, so different in
appearance that they would never be thought to consist of the same
material as those higher up on the shore. These are masses of wave-worn
rock, twenty or thirty feet across, piled in every imaginable position,
and completely covered with a thick padding of seaweed. Their drapery of
algae hangs in festoons, and if we draw aside these submarine curtains,
scenes from a veritable fairyland are disclosed. Deep pools of water,
clear as crystal and icy cold, contain creatures both hideous and
beautiful, sombre and iridescent, formless and of exquisite shape.
The sea-anemones first attract attention, showing as splashes of scarlet
and salmon among the olive-green seaweed, or in hundreds covering the
entire bottom of a pool with a delicately hued mist of waving tentacles.
As the water leaves these exposed on the walls of the caves, they lose
their plump appearance and, drawing in their wreath of tentacles, hang
limp and shrivelled, resembling pieces of water-soaked meat as much as
anything. Submerged in the icy water they are veritable animal-flowers.
Their beauty is indeed well guarded, hidden by the overhanging seaweed in
these caves twenty-five feet or more below high-water mark.
Here in these beautiful caverns we may make aquariums, and transplant as
many animal-flowers as we wish. Wherever we place them their fleshy,
snail-like foot spreads out, takes tight hold, and the creature lives
content, patiently waiting for the Providence of the sea to send food to
its many wide-spread fingers.
Carpeted with pink algae and dainty sponges, draped with sea-lettuce like
green tissue paper, decorated with strange corallines, these natural
aquariums far surpass any of artificial make. Although the tide drives us
from them sooner or later, we may return with the sure prospect of finding
them refreshed and perhaps replenished with many new forms. For often some
of the deep-water creatures are held prisoners in the lower tide-pools, as
the water settles, somewhat as when the glaciers receded northward after
the Ice Age there were left on isolated mountain peaks traces of the
boreal fauna and flora.
If we are interested enough to watch our anemones we will find much
entertainment. Let us return to our shrimp colonies and bring a handful to
our pool. Drop one in the centre of an anemone and see how quickly it
contracts. The tentacles bend over it exactly as the sticky hairs of the
sun-dew plant close over a fly. The shrimp struggles for a moment and is
then drawn downward out of sight. The birth of an anemone is well worth
patient watching, and this may take place in several different ways. We
may see a large individual with a number of tiny bunches on the sides of
the body, and if we keep this one in a tumbler, before long these
protuberances will be seen to develop a few tentacles and at last break
off as perfect miniature anemones. Or again, an anemone may draw in its
tentacles without apparent cause, and after a few minutes expand more
widely than ever. Suddenly a movement of the mouth is seen, and it opens,
and one, two, or even a half-dozen tiny anemones shoot forth. They turn
and roll in the little spurt of water and gradually settle to the rock
alongside of the mother. In a short time they turn right side up, expand
their absurd little heads, and begin life for themselves. These animal
"buds" may be of all sizes; some minute ones will be much less developed
and look very unlike the parent. These are able to swim about for a while,
and myriads of them may be born in an hour. Others, as we have seen, have
tentacles and settle down at once.
Fishes, little and big, are abundant in the pools, darting here and there
among the leathery fronds of "devils' aprons," cavernous-mouthed angler
fish, roly-poly young lump-suckers, lithe butterfish, and many others.
Moving slowly through the pools are many beautiful creatures, some so
evanescent that they are only discoverable by the faint shadows which they
cast on the bottom, others suggest animated spheres of prismatic sunlight.
These latter are tiny jelly-fish, circular hyaline masses of jelly with
eight longitudinal bands, composed of many comb-like plates, along which
iridescent waves of light continually play. The graceful appearance of
these exquisite creatures is increased by two long, fringed tentacles
streaming behind, drifting at full length or contracting into numerous
coils. The fringe on these streamers is a series of living hairs--an
aquatic cobweb, each active with life, and doing its share in ensnaring
minute atoms of food for its owner. When dozens of these _ctenophores_ (or
comb-bearers) as they are called, glide slowly to and fro through a pool,
the sight is not soon forgotten. To try to photograph them is like
attempting to portray the substance of a sunbeam, but patience works
wonders, and even a slightly magnified image of a living jelly is secured,
which shows very distinctly all the details of its wonderfully simple
structure; the pouch, suspended in the centre of the sphere, which does
duty as a stomach; the sheaths into which the long tentacles may be so
magically packed, and the tiny organ at the top of this living ball of
spun glass, serving, with its minute weights and springs, as compass,
rudder, and pilot to this little creature, which does not fear to pit its
muscles of jelly against the rush and might of breaking waves.
Even the individual comb-plates or rows of oars are plainly seen,
although, owing to their rapid motion, they appear to the naked eye as a
single band of scintillating light. This and other magnified photographs
were obtained by fastening the lens of a discarded bicycle lantern in a
cone of paper blackened on the inside with shoe-blacking. With this crude
apparatus placed in front of the lens of the camera, the evanescent
beauties of these most delicate creatures were preserved.
Other equally beautiful forms of jelly-fish are balloon-shaped. These are
_Beroe_, fitly named after the daughter of the old god Oceanus. They, like
others of their family, pulsate through the water, sweeping gracefully
along, borne on currents of their own making.
Passing to other inhabitants of the pools, we find starfish and
sea-urchins everywhere abundant. Hunched-up groups of the former show
where they are dining in their unique way on unfortunate sea-snails or
anemones, protruding their whole stomach and thus engulfing their victim.
The urchins strain and stretch with their innumerable sucker-feet, feeling
for something to grasp, and in this laborious way pull themselves along.
The mouth, with the five so-called teeth, is a conspicuous feature,
visible at the centre of the urchin and surrounded by the greenish spines.
Some of the starfish are covered with long spines, others are nearly
smooth. The colours are wonderfully varied,--red, purple, orange, yellow,
etc.
The stages through which these prickly skinned animals pass, before they
reach the adult state, are wonderfully curious, and only when they are
seen under the microscope can they be fully appreciated. A bolting-cloth
net drawn through some of the pools will yield thousands in many stages,
and we can take eggs of the common starfish and watch their growth in
tumblers of water. At first the egg seems nothing but a tiny round globule
of jelly, but soon a dent or depression appears on one side, which becomes
deeper and deeper until it extends to the centre of the egg-mass. It is as
if we should take a round ball of putty and gradually press our finger
into it. This pressed-in sac is a kind of primitive stomach and the
entrance is used as a mouth. After this follows a marvellous succession of
changes, form giving place to form, differing more in appearance and
structure from the five-armed starfish than a caterpillar differs from a
butterfly.
For example, when about eight days old, another mouth has formed and two
series of delicate cilia or swimming hairs wind around the creature, by
means of which it glides slowly through the water. The photographs of a
starfish of this age show the stomach with its contents, a dark rounded
mass near the lower portion of the organism. The vibrating bands which
outline the tiny animal are also visible. The delicacy of structure and
difficulty of preserving these young starfish alive make these pictures of
particular value, especially as they were taken of the living forms
swimming in their natural element. Each day and almost each hour adds to
the complexity of the little animal, lung tentacles grow out and many
other larval stages are passed through before the starfish shape is
discernible within this curious "nurse" or living, changing egg. Then the
entire mass, so elaborately evolved through so long a time, is absorbed
and the little baby star sinks to the bottom to start on its new life,
crawling around and over whatever happens in its path and feeding to
repletion on succulent oysters. It can laugh at the rage of the oysterman,
who angrily tears it in pieces, for "time heals all wounds" literally in
the case of these creatures, and even if the five arms are torn apart,
five starfish, small of arm but with healthy stomachs, will soon be
foraging on the oyster bed.
But to return to our tide-pools. In the skimming net with the young
starfish many other creatures are found, some so delicate and fragile that
they disintegrate before microscope and camera can be placed in position.
I lie at full length on a soft couch of seaweed with my face close to a
tiny pool no larger than my hand. A few armadillo shells and limpets crawl
on the bottom, but a frequent troubling of the water baffles me. I make
sure my breath has nothing to do with it, but still it continues. At last
a beam of sunshine lights up the pool, and as if a film had rolled from my
eyes I see the cause of the disturbance. A sea-worm--or a ghost of one--is
swimming about. Its large, brilliant eyes, long tentacles, and innumerable
waving appendages are now as distinct as before they had been invisible. A
trifling change in my position and all vanishes as if by magic. There
seems not an organ, not a single part of the creature, which is not as
transparent as the water itself. The fine streamers into which the paddles
and gills are divided are too delicate to have existence in any but a
water creature, and the least attempt to lift the animal from its element
would only tear and dismember it, so I leave it in the pool to await the
return of the tide.
Shrimps and prawns of many shapes and colours inhabit every pool. One
small species, abundant on the algae, combines the colour changes of a
chameleon with the form and manner of travel of a measuring-worm, looping
along the fronds of seaweed or swimming with the same motion. Another
variety of shrimp resembles the common wood-louse found under pieces of
bark, but is most beautifully iridescent, glowing like an opal at the
bottom of the pool. The curious little sea-spiders keep me guessing for a
long time where their internal organs can be, as they consist of legs with
merely enough body to connect these firmly together. The fact that the
thread-like stomach and other organs send a branch into each of the eight
legs explains the mystery and shows how far economy of space may go. Their
skeleton-forms, having the appearance of eight straggling filaments of
seaweed, are thus, doubtless, a great protection to these creatures from
their many enemies. Other hobgoblin forms with huge probosces crawl slowly
over the floors of the anemone caves, or crouch as the shadow of my hand
or net falls upon them.
The larger gorgeously coloured and graceful sea-worms contribute not a
small share to the beauty of Fundy tide-pools, swimming in iridescent
waves through the water or waving their Medusa-head of crimson tentacles
at the bottom among the sea-lettuce. These worms form tubes of mud for
themselves, and the rows of hooks on each side of the body enable them to
climb up and down in their dismal homes.
Much of the seaweed from deeper bottoms seems to be covered with a dense
fur, which under a hand lens resolves into beautiful hydroids,--near
relatives of the anemones and corals. Scientists have happily given these
most euphonious names--_Campanularia_, _Obelia_, and _Plumularia_. Among
the branches of certain of these, numbers of round discs or spheres are
visible. These are young medusae or jelly-fish, which grow like bunches of
currants, and later will break off and swim around at pleasure in the
water. Occasionally one is fortunate enough to discover these small
jellies in a pool where they can be photographed as they pulsate back and
forth. When these attain their full size they lay eggs which sink to the
bottom and grow up into the plant-like hydroids. So each generation of
these interesting creatures is entirely unlike that which immediately
precedes or follows it. In other words, a hydroid is exactly like its
grandmother and granddaughter, but as different from its parents and
children in appearance as a plant is from an animal. Even in a fairy-story
book this would be wonderful, but here it is taking place under our very
eyes, as are scores of other transformations and "miracles in miniature"
in this marvellous underworld.
Now let us deliberately pass by all the attractions of the middle zone of
tide-pools and on as far as the lowest level of the water will admit. We
are far out from the shore and many feet below the level of the
barnacle-covered boulders over which we first clambered. Now we may indeed
be prepared for strange sights, for we are on the very borderland of the
vast unknown. The abyss in front of us is like planetary space, unknown to
the feet of man. While we know the latter by scant glimpses through our
telescopes, the former has only been scratched by the hauls of the dredge,
the mark of whose iron shoe is like the tiny track of a snail on the leaf
mould of a vast forest.
The first plunge beneath the icy waters of Fundy is likely to remain long
in one's memory, and one's first dive of short duration, but the glimpse
which is had and the hastily snatched handfuls of specimens of the
beauties which no tide ever uncovers is potent to make one forget his
shivering and again and again seek to penetrate as far as a good-sized
stone and a lungful of air will carry him. Strange sensations are
experienced in these aquatic scrambles. It takes a long time to get used
to pulling oneself _downward_, or propping your knees against the _under_
crevices of rocks. To all intents and purposes, the law of gravitation is
partly suspended, and when stone and wooden wedge accidentally slip from
one's hand and disappear in _opposite_ directions, it is confusing, to say
the least.
When working in one spot for some time the fishes seem to become used to
one, and approach quite closely. Slick-looking pollock, bloated lump-fish,
and occasionally a sombre dog-fish rolls by, giving one a start, as the
memory of pictures of battles between divers and sharks of tropical waters
comes to mind. One's mental impressions made thus are somewhat
disconnected. With the blood buzzing in the ears, it is only possible to
snatch general glimpses and superficial details. Then at the surface,
notes can be made, and specimens which have been overlooked, felt for
during the next trip beneath the surface. Fronds of laminaria yards in
length, like sheets of rubber, offer convenient holds, and at their roots
many curious creatures make their home. Serpent starfish, agile as insects
and very brittle, are abundant, and new forms of worms, like great
slugs,--their backs covered with gills in the form of tufted branches.
In these outer, eternally submerged regions are starfish of still other
shapes, some with a dozen or more arms. I took one with thirteen rays and
placed it temporarily in a pool aquarium with some large anemones. On
returning in an hour or two I found the starfish trying to make a meal of
the largest anemone. Hundreds of dart-covered strings had been pushed out
by the latter in defence, but they seemed to cause the starfish no
inconvenience whatever.
In my submarine glimpses I saw spaces free from seaweed on which hundreds
of tall polyps were growing, some singly, others in small tufts. The
solitary individuals rise three or four inches by a nearly straight stalk,
surmounted by a many-tentacled head. This droops gracefully to one side
and the general effect is that of a bed of rose-coloured flowers. From the
heads hang grape-like masses, which on examination in a tumbler are seen
to be immature medusae. Each of these develop to the point where the four
radiating canals are discernible and then their growth comes to a
standstill, and they never attain the freedom for which their structure
fits them.
When the wind blew inshore, I would often find the water fairly alive with
large sun-jellies or _Aurelia_,--their Latin name. Their great milky-white
bodies would come heaving along and bump against me, giving a very
"crawly" sensation. The circle of short tentacles and the four
horse-shoe-shaped ovaries distinguish this jelly-fish from all others.
When I had gone down as far as I dared, I would sometimes catch glimpses
of these strange beings far below me, passing and repassing in the silence
and icy coldness of the watery depths. These large medusae are often very
abundant after a favourable wind has blown for a few days, and I have
rowed through masses of them so thick that it seemed like rowing through
thick jelly, two or three feet deep. In an area the length of the boat and
about a yard wide, I have counted over one hundred and fifty _Aurelias_ on
the surface alone.
When one of these "sunfish," as the fishermen call them, is lifted from
the water, the clay-coloured eggs may be seen to stream from it in
myriads. In many jellies, small bodies the size of a pea are visible in
the interior of the mass, and when extracted they prove to be a species of
small shrimp. These are well adapted for their quasi-parasitic life, in
colour being throughout of the same milky semi-opaqueness as their host,
but one very curious thing about them is, that when taken out and placed
in some water in a vial or tumbler they begin to turn darker almost
immediately, and in five minutes all will be of various shades, from red
to a dark brown.
I had no fear of _Aurelia_, but when another free-swimming species of
jelly-fish, _Cyanea_, or the blue-jelly, appeared, I swam ashore with all
speed. This great jelly is usually more of a reddish liver-colour than a
purple, and is much to be dreaded. Its tentacles are of enormous length. I
have seen specimens which measured two feet across the disc, with
streamers fully forty feet long, and one has been recorded seven feet
across and no less than one hundred and twelve feet to the tip of the
cruel tentacles! These trail behind in eight bunches and form a living,
tangled labyrinth as deadly as the hair of the fabled Medusa--whose name
indeed has been so appropriately applied to this division of animals. The
touch of each tentacle to the skin is like a lash of nettle, and there
would be little hope for a diver whose path crossed such a fiery tangle.
The untold myriads of little darts which are shot out secrete a poison
which is terribly irritating.
On the crevice bottoms a sight now and then meets my eyes which brings the
"devil-fish" of Victor Hugo's romance vividly to mind,--a misshapen squid
making its way snakily over the shells and seaweed. Its large eyes gaze
fixedly around and the arms reach alternately forward, the sucking cups
lined with their cruel teeth closing over the inequalities of the bottom.
The creature may suddenly change its mode of progression and shoot like an
arrow, backward and upward. If we watch one in its passage over areas of
seaweed and sand, a wonderful adaptation becomes apparent. Its colour
changes continually; when near sand it is of a sombre brown hue, then
blushes of colour pass over it and the tint changes, corresponding to the
seaweed or patches of pink sponge over which it swims. The way in which
this is accomplished is very ingenious and loses nothing by examination.
Beneath the skin are numerous cells filled with liquid pigment. When at
rest these contract until they are almost invisible, appearing as very
small specks or dots on the surface of the body. When the animal wishes to
change its hue, certain muscles which radiate from these colour cells are
shortened, drawing the cells out in all directions until they seem
confluent. It is as if the freckles on a person's face should be all
joined together, when an ordinary tan would result.
From bottoms ten to twenty fathoms below the surface, deeper than mortal
eye can probably ever hope to reach, the dredge brings up all manner of
curious things; basket starfish, with arms divided and subdivided into
many tendrils, on the tips of which it walks, the remaining part
converging upward like the trellis of a vine-covered summer house. Sponges
of many hues must fairly carpet large areas of the deep water, as the
dredge is often loaded with them. The small shore-loving ones which I
photographed are in perfect health, but the camera cannot show the many
tiny currents of water pouring in food and oxygen at the smaller openings,
and returning in larger streams from the tall funnels on the surface of
the sponge, which a pinch of carmine dust reveals so beautifully. From the
deeper aquatic gardens come up great orange and yellow sponges, two and
three feet in length, and around the bases of these the weird serpent
stars are clinging, while crabs scurry away as the mass reaches the
surface of the water.
Treasures from depths of forty and even fifty fathoms can be obtained when
a trip is taken with the trawl-men. One can sit fascinated for hours,
watching the hundreds of yards of line reel in, with some interesting
creature on each of the thirty-seven hundred odd hooks. At times a glance
down into the clear water will show a score of fish in sight at once,
hake, haddock, cod, halibut, dog-fish, and perhaps an immense "barndoor"
skate, a yard or more square. This latter hold back with frantic flaps of
its great "wings," and tax all the strength of the sturdy Acadian
fishermen to pull it to the gunwale.
Now and then a huge "meat-rock," the fishermen's apt name for an anemone,
comes up, impaled on a hook, and still clinging to a stone of five to ten
pounds weight. These gigantic scarlet ones from full fifty fathoms far
surpass any near shore. Occasionally the head alone of a large fish will
appear, with the entire body bitten clean off, a hint of the monsters
which must haunt the lower depths. The pressure of the air must be
excessive, for many of the fishes have their swimming bladders fairly
forced out of their mouths by the lessening of atmospheric pressure as
they are drawn to the surface. When a basket starfish finds one of the
baits in that sunless void far beneath our boat, he hugs it so tenaciously
that the upward jerks of the reel only make him hold the more tightly.
Once in a great while the fishermen find what they call a "knob-fish" on
one of their hooks, and I never knew what they meant until one day a small
colony of five was brought ashore. _Boltenia_, the scientists call them,
tall, queer-shaped things; a stalk six to eight inches in length, with a
knob or oblong bulb-like body at the summit, looking exactly like the
flower of a lady-slipper orchid and as delicately coloured. This is a
member of that curious family of Ascidians, which forever trembles in the
balance between the higher backboned animals and the lower division, where
are classified the humbler insects, crabs, and snails. The young of
_Boltenia_ promises everything in its tiny backbone or notochord, but it
all ends in promise, for that shadow of a great ambition withers away, and
the creature is doomed to a lowly and vegetative life. If we soften the
hard scientific facts which tell us of these dumb, blind creatures, with
the humane mellowing thought of the oneness of all life, we will find much
that is pathetic and affecting in their humble biographies from our point
of view. And yet these cases of degeneration are far from anything like
actual misfortunes, or mishaps of nature, as Buffon was so fond of
thinking. These creatures have found their adult mode of life more free
from competition than any other, and hence their adoption of it. It is
only another instance of exquisite adaptation to an unfilled niche in the
life of the world.
Yet another phase of enjoying the life of these northern waters; the one
which comes after all the work and play of collecting is over for the day,
after the last specimen is given a fresh supply of water for the night,
and the final note in our journal is written. Then, as dusk falls, we make
our way to the beach, ship our rudder and oars and push slowly along
shore, or drift quietly with the tide. The stars may come out in clear
splendour and the visual symphony of the northern lights play over the
dark vault above us, or all may be obscured in lowering, leaden clouds.
But the lights of the sea are never obscured--they always shine with a
splendour which keeps one entranced for hours.
At night the ripples and foam of the Fundy shores seem transformed to
molten silver and gold, and after each receding wave the emerald seaweed
is left dripping with millions of sparkling lights, shining with a living
lustre which would pale the brightest gem. Each of these countless sparks
is a tiny animal, as perfect in its substance and as well adapted to its
cycle of life as the highest created being. The wonderful way in which
this phosphorescence permeates everything--the jelly-fish seeming elfish
fireworks as they throb through the water with rhythmic beats--the fish
brilliantly lighted up and plainly visible as they dart about far beneath
the surface--makes such a night on the Bay of Fundy an experience to be
always remembered.
Like the tints on a crescent sea beach
When the moon is new and thin,
Into our hearts high yearnings
Come welling and surging in--
Come, from the mystic ocean,
Whose rim no foot has trod--
Some of us call it longing,
And others call it God.
W. H. Carruth.
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