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 coralli