Ocean Gardens E-Book

H. Noel Humphreys

• Herausgeber: H. Noel Humphreys
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

What the vast majority of our migratory flocks of summer and autumnal idlers generally do and think at the sea-side, cannot be better exemplified than by reference to the clever sketches which are found occupying entire pages of our illustrated periodicals and newspapers, during the season of marine migration. But the habits and customs of the annual shoal of visitors to our watering-places, may be still more intimately comprehended through the medium of the sprightly essays which generally accompany those truly artistic delineations.
And is there really nothing better to do—no better regime to go through, than the daily repetition of the monotonous programme of entertainment thus playfully described and ridiculed?

Leseprobe

H. Noel Humphreys

Ocean Gardens

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Table of contents

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER II. THE FLOOR OF THE OCEAN.

CHAPTER III. THE AQUARIUM.

CHAPTER IV. THE VEGETATION OF THE MARINE AQUARIUM.

CHAPTER V. THE ZOÖPHYTES.

CHAPTER VI. THE MOLLUSCS, ETC.

CHAPTER VII. THE ASCIDIANS, BARNACLES, SEA-CUCUMBERS,NAKED MOLLUSCS, SEA-WORMS, ETC.

CHAPTER VIII. THE FISH AND CRUSTACEANS OF THE AQUARIUM.

CHAPTER IX. CONCLUSION.

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION.

What the vast majority of our migratory flocks of summer and autumnal idlers generally do and think at the sea-side, cannot be better exemplified than by reference to the clever sketches which are found occupying entire pages of our illustrated periodicals and newspapers, during the season of marine migration. But the habits and customs of the annual shoal of visitors to our watering-places, may be still more intimately comprehended through the medium of the sprightly essays which generally accompany those truly artistic delineations.And is there really nothing better to do—no better regime to go through, than the daily repetition of the monotonous programme of entertainment thus playfully described and ridiculed?Surely the visitor at the sea-side is in reach of something more pleasant and profitable than such a routine!Do not the sublime aspects of the ocean—the sound of its deep, ceaseless voice—the eternal on-coming of its waves, now in calm undulations, and now in hurtling wildness against the base of those cliffs whose white brows are wreathed with perennial flowers—suggest other matters both for reflection and amusement? Surely the very whispering of the breeze that has travelled so far over that vast moving surface of the fathomless deep, and which seems muttering of its mysteries, while laden with its sweet saline odour—“ce parfum acre de la mer,” as Dumas has termed it—might lead us towards other and higher trains of thought. Surely those voices in the wind, mingling with the strange murmur of the waves as they break in cadenced regularity upon the shore, rouse, in the feelings of those who hear them for the first time, or after a long absence, strange sensations of admiration, and curiosity, and wonder. But no; to most of the idle crowd those sights and sounds are invisible and unheard. Their ears have not been tutored to understand the word-music of Nature’s language, nor to read the brightly-written signs on its mighty page.To appreciate Nature, as well as Art, the mind requires a special education, without which the eye and the ear perceive but little of the miracles passing before them. To the eye of the common observer, the farthest field in the landscape is as green as the nearest, in the scene outspread before him; while to the practised glance of the accomplished artist, every yard of distance lends its new tone of colour to the tints of the herbage, till, through a thousand delicate gradations, the brightest verdure at last mingles with the atmospheric hue, and is eventually lost in the pervading azure. If, then, the ordinary aspects of Nature may not be fully interpreted by the untutored eye, how should her more hidden mysteries be felt or understood, or even guessed at? And, in fact, they are not, or the visitor to the sea-side, looking over that wide tremulous expanse of water that covers so many mysteries, would feel, like the child taken for the first time within the walls of a theatre, an intense anxiety to raise the dark-green curtain which conceals the scene of fairy wonders he is greedily longing to behold and enjoy. But the lounger at the sea-side does not guess at the wonders concealed by the dark-green curtain of the ocean, and, consequently, never dreams of wishing to peep beneath its waving folds, to gratify a curiosity which, in fact, does not exist.When, however, the language of Nature is learnt, and her voice is no longer a confused murmur to the ear, but becomes a brilliant series of eloquent words, full of deep and exquisite meaning, then the student will see as well as hear; but till then, in his intercourse with Nature, he is both deaf and blind. “Speak,” said Socrates to a youth; “say something, that I may see you.” Socrates saw not a silent man; and those who do not hear and understand Nature’s language, cannot see her wondrous beauty.The mill-like repetition of worldly affairs brings on a torpor of mind, in regard to all without the narrow circle of selfish interests and easily purchased pleasures, which it is very difficult to wake up from. But I would warn the suffering victims of that baneful, though secret, presence; for when the consciousness of its existence is aroused, the first step will have been taken towards its eradication.I would remind all those suffering from inactivity of mind, of the wholesome dread of that kind of mental torpor entertained by the Gymnosophists; who, as Apuleus tells us, when they met at meals, required that each should be able to narrate the particulars of some discovery, or original thought, or good action, or it was deemed that he did not exhibit a sufficient reason for being allowed to consume a share of the viands, and he was consequently excluded from the repast. Were each of our most idle sea-side loungers to impose upon himself the necessity of a discovery, or an original thought, before he considered himself entitled to dine, that torpor, so deadening to the natural capacities of his mind, would soon give way to a state of mental activity, which, were it only from the brightness of the contrast, would be found highly agreeable, to say nothing of its advantages, or of the elevating and refining trains of thought to which it would necessarily give rise.I know of nothing more likely to stimulate the mind to healthy exertion, and take it out of the immediate track of common interests and pleasures, the monotony of which is so oppressive, than the study of natural history in some of its least explored fields, especially its extraordinary development in connection with the waters of the ocean. And yet, how few there are who seek that charming mode of dissipating the dreary monotony of social life, such as it is made by the routine of fashion or habit! A popular love of natural history, even in its best known divisions, is, in fact, of quite recent growth. Indeed, the very existence of such a science has been, till recently, altogether ignored by our great national seats of learning. The earnest investigators, who have done so much to lay bare its wonders, were either openly ridiculed, or treated with but small respect—as useless dreamers upon very small and insignificant matters. The very names of such true labourers in the mine of science as our glorious old naturalist Ray, or his follower Pulteney, or the indefatigable Ellis, the first detector of the true nature of Zoöphytes, who measured pens with the giant Linnæus, received no academic honour; and those of their undiscouraged successors have been rarely heard, either in our universities or among our general public, till the vast discoveries of geology and other allied branches of science, in our own times, have at last aroused attention to their importance.Any popular knowledge of that branch of natural history which especially concerns our seas and shores, is indeed of still more recent date. The subject, in fact, is but even now beginning to develop itself beneath the pens of an enterprising band of marine naturalists, with such leaders as Johnston, Harvey, John Edward Gray, the indefatigable Gosse, and the revered shade of the lamented Forbes at their head.A truly popular knowledge even of those more accessible regions of our woods and fields, is but little more ancient; for, till Gilbert White had made the story of such knowledge as attractive as romance, in his “Natural History of Selborne,” few guessed what an arena of ever new interests and discoveries it presented.Through the fascinating interpretation of the good Gilbert, many now understand the attraction of those branches of natural history which he so curiously investigated; but few are willing to admit that it is as easy to make the natural features of some obscure fishing-village, with no herbage on its bare rocks, and no bush, no blade of grass, no bird to be seen or heard, equally interesting; yet I can assure them, that by lifting even the mere border of that green curtain of the ocean, or by awaiting its unveilings, as the retiring tide bears back its folds, a host of wonders will be revealed, sufficient to rouse the most torpid mind of the most inactive idler to their earnest and deeply-inquiring contemplation, and arouse him to their devout admiration, as among the most exquisite miracles of that creative and sustaining Power which is the source of their existence.

CHAPTER II. THE FLOOR OF THE OCEAN.

The wonders of the ocean floor do not reveal themselves to vulgar eyes. As the oracle was inaudible to sacrilegious listeners, and as none but poetic ears heard the cadenced beating of the feet that danced to unearthly music, near the fountain haunted by the Muses of classic fable—so, none but the initiated can see the myriad miracles that each receding tide reveals on the ocean floor. The initiation, however, is not mysterious; there are no dark rites to observe—no Herculean labours to accomplish, before entering upon the noviciate, which at once opens a large area of unexpected pleasures, and an ample field for admiration and investigation. A few elementary works carefully studied, or even this present little book attentively perused, would supply the first helps towardsseeing, at all events, a portion of the “wonders of the shore,” as the brilliant author of “Glaucus” has eloquently termed those revelations of the retiring deep.It is theseeingthat is everything. But let none despair of acquiring that power. “The name of the Devonshire squire, Colonel George Montague” (thus wrote the late Professor Edward Forbes), “might have become one of the greatest in the whole range of British science, had his whole career been devoted to marine physiology;” and that mainly because, from a sincere devotion to a favourite pursuit of his leisure, he acquired the art ofseeing—an art sought by so few, though open to all who will earnestly seek it.Each department of science requires a separate and distinct kind of sight. The astute merchant deciphers at a glance the precise state of the most intricate accounts, in the midst of thousands of seemingly conflicting figures; but of the thousand interesting and wonderful things concerning the little beetle that crosses his path in his country walk, he is incapable of seeing any single particle; while the despised entomologist, whom he has contemptuously observed turning over the stones at the road-side, and peering curiously beneath them, could tell him a tale of wonder, could preach him a sermon upon that tiny type, such as would surely wake up many latent and unsuspected powers in his mind, that would enable him toseewonders where all had previously been blank, and teach him that there are things well worthy of investigation beyond the region of money-making, and the attractive but narrow circle distinguished by the fascinating characters, £s. d.Those who cannotseeNature, who cannot see more than an unclean thing in the little creeping beetle, are like one gazing at a carved Egyptian record, who perceives, in the hieroglyphic scarabæus, simply the sculptured figure of a beetle, and no more—they are in a state of “Egyptian darkness” as regards one of the highest and most enchanting fields of human research. But to those who have acquired this rare though easy art, and learned toseeNature, even to a moderate extent (for in that art are an infinite number of degrees and gradations), the aspect of the ocean floor must present an appearance as beautiful and strange, and seemingly as supernatural, as the wildest imagination could depicture.When poets would travel, in their inventive flights, to other floating and revolving worlds than ours, they describe rosy skies, instead of azure, and trees like branching crystals, with jewel-like fruits glittering on every stem. They present us with pictures, in short, in which all the ordinary aspects of our planet are reversed, or metamorphosed, in the region of their invention; but in their most fanciful pictures they do not surpass in strangeness the wonders of the world beneath the sea.On the land, we have, as the ordinary aspect of Nature, the green herbaceous mantle of the earth below the eye, and the azure sky above; while a spectator, standing beneath the water on the ocean floor, would see these features more than reversed: he would see above him a liquid atmosphere of green, and below, an herbage of red or of purple hue, exhibiting strange yet exquisite forms, such as no terrestrial vegetation displays. Roseate shrubs of jointed stone, and arborets of filmy glass, and creatures full of active, energetic life, whose forms are stranger still, both in structure and in appearance; mere worms, whose colours are gorgeous as the tints of the butterfly’s wing, or the peacock’s tail, or the humming-bird’s breast.What scenery is formed by that translucent and miniature forest ofDelesseria sanguinea, how lovely in its tones of soft rich crimson; and those fan-like shrubs, in crisply graceful tufts, the bright and singularPadina pavonia; and the tree-like masses ofCallithamnion arbuscula, and the delicatePtilota plumosa, and the purple-tintedCorallines, forming those “Arborets of jointed stone.”And then the high waving fronds of the grandly gracefulPorphyra vulgaris, the deep carmine of theIridæa edulis, the nacreous tinges of theChondrus crispus, and the blood-red of the splendidRhodymenia lacinata, with its embroidered and lace-like edges; these, with the gorgeous tufts of the rich purpleBangia, and other objects which form the elements of still life in a submarine landscape, surely cannot be surpassed, either for magnificence of colour or variety of structure.But to these features must be added others more extraordinary—forms that the elder naturalists imagined to be links between the animal and vegetable creation, but which are now known to have no affinity whatever with plants, though they exhibit the appearance of expanded flowers of various hues, displaying the forms of the Carnation, the Anemone, the Mesembryanthemum, and other beautiful flowers whose names they bear. These curiously beautiful Zoöphytes, the wonderfulActiniæ, exhibit every tone of colour, from purple and scarlet, to green and white, and might be taken in their picturesquely-placed groups for rare exotic flower [...]