e metallic veins that planetary upheaval deposits upon the
oceanic bottom; compared with this mass, the veins of mountains with
their golden sands deposited by the rivers are but insignificant
tentacles.

Silver also is dissolved in its waters. Ferragut knew by certain
calculations that with the silver floating in the ocean could be
erected pyramids more enormous than those in Egypt.

The men who once had thought of exploiting these mineral riches had
given up the visionary idea because the minerals were too diluted and
it would be impossible to make use of them. The oceanic beings know
better how to recognize their presence, letting them filter through
their bodies for the renovation and coloration of their organs. The
copper accumulates in their blood; the gold and silver are discovered
in the texture of the animal-plants; the phosphorus is absorbed by the
sponges; the lead and the zinc by species of algae.

Every oceanic creature is able to extract from the water the residuum
from certain metals dissolved into particles so incalculably tiny that
no chemical process could ever capture them. The carbonates of lime
deposited by the rivers or dragged from the coast serve innumerable
species for the construction of their coverings, skeletons, and spiral
shells. The corals, filtering the water across their flabby and mucous
bodies, solidify their hard skeletons so that they may finally be
converted into habitable islands.

The beings of disconcerting diversity that were floating, diving, or
wiggling around Ferragut were no more than oceanic water. The fish were
water made into flesh; the slimy, mucilaginous animals were water in a
gelatinous state; the crustaceans and the polypi were water turned to
stone.

In one of the tanks he saw a landscape which appeared like that of
another planet, grandiose yet at the same time reduced, like a woods
seen in a diorama. It was a palm grove, surging up between the rocks,
but the rocks were only pebbles, and the palm trees,--annelides of the
sea,--were simply worms holding themselves in upright immovability.

They kept their ringed bodies within a leathern tube that formed their
protective case, and from this rectilinear, marble-colored trunk sent
forth, like a spout of branches, the constantly moving tentacles which
served them as organs for breathing and eating.

Endowed with rare sensitiveness, it was enough for a cloud to pass
before the sun to make them shrink quickly with