Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the Shore

These are but a few of the wonders which the classification of marine animals affords; and only drawn from one class of them, though almost as common among every other family of that submarine world whereof Spenser sang— “Oh, what an endless work have I in hand, To count the sea’s abundant progeny! Whose fruitful seed far passeth those in land, And also those which won in th’ azure sky, For much more earth to tell the stars on high, Albe they endless seem in estimation, Than to recount the sea’s posterity; So fertile be the flouds in generation, So huge their numbers, and so numberless their nation.” But these few examples will be sufficient to account both for the slow pace at which the knowledge of sea-animals has progressed, and for the allurement which men of the highest attainments have found, and still find, in it. And when to this we add the marvels which meet us at every step in the anatomy and the reproduction of these creatures, and in the chemical and mechanical functions which they fulfil in the great economy of our planet, we cannot wonder at finding that books which treat of them carry with them a certain charm of romance, and feed the play of fancy, and that love of the marvellous which is inherent in man, at the same time that they lead the reader to more solemn and lofty trains of thought, which can find their full satisfaction only in self-forgetful worship, and that hymn of praise which goes up ever from land and sea, as well as from saints and martyrs and the heavenly host, “O all ye works of the Lord, and ye, too, spirits and souls of the righteous, praise Him, and magnify Him for ever!”