Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the Shore

A hint or two of the beauty of the sea-weeds has been given; but space has allowed no more. Yet we might have spent our time with almost as much interest and profit, had we neglected utterly the animals which we have found, and devoted our attention exclusively to the flora of the rocks. Sea-weeds are no mere playthings for children; and to buy at a shop some thirty pretty kinds, pasted on paper, with long names (probably mis-spelt) written under each, is not by any means to possess a collection of them. Putting aside the number and the obscurity of their species, the questions which arise in studying their growth, reproduction, and organic chemistry are of the very deepest and most important in the whole range of science; and it will need but a little study of such a book as Harvey’s “Algæ,” to show the wise man that he who has comprehended (which no man yet does) the mystery of a single spore or tissue-cell, has reached depths in the great “Science of Life” at which an Owen would still confess himself “blind by excess of light.”