e."

Folks call these flowers, such as they have seen of them, weeds,
seaweeds. And I suppose they have to come under that name, as they are
not planted from seeds, but are a wild growth. Ah, but some great
Planter or Gardener surely put all these wonderful shapes and splendid
tints in the soft earth of a sea-garden. And it is all so blithe and
gay!

Here are nearly all the shapes in bushes and almost trees that you have
in your garden on land. And as to flowers, there are leaves, spires,
cups, bells, tassels, very much such as you see in your garden at home.

See these beautiful crimson leaves, as large as the top of a small
table, and cut in such fine, even scallops around the edges, and here is
one with a great pad of yellow right on the crimson. My! My! is it not
colored richly?

Here are leaves shooting out like rafts, thick, like the leaves of a
rubber-tree, but larger and of a deep red. You might take a sail on one
of them. And here is a bush, shooting upright from its muddy bed, all
covered with pink sprays, on which are pink blossoms. Doesn't it make
you think of a syringa bush? Only these flowers are pink.

Next comes this plant with a large olive green stem covered thickly
with branches, bearing flowers resembling pink roses. Were this plant
taken to the church some Sunday morning and placed on the pulpit-stand,
you may believe that after the service Folks would go crowding about the
altar, eager to find out its name and whence it came.

What a clucking of surprise there would be when it was told that not
from any hothouse whatever, but from the depths of the ocean came the
full, lovely sea-roses.

Are these sprays of pink coral? No, they are sea-rods and branches. If
you pinch the thick stems, water will ooze out, for they are partly
hollow, like the pond-lily stem.

I do not wonder you look with questioning surprise at that next plant.
It is like a mass of purple bushes, a very sweet growth rather hard to
describe. All through the delicate branches are what look like small
dark berries, seen through a mist of pinkish, hairy spires.

Don't start. These merry fishes darting through the next clump of bushes
have only come to smell of the carnation pinks the bushes bear. Are they
not strangely like your garden carnations?

See the fishes nip at those singular pink flowers with a thick fringe
hanging from the edges. It is a shame to spoil them, but some fishes
always seem to think that graceful fring