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 fringe droops down on purpose for
them to peck at.

Now if the baby were only here, you could seat him on these broad, flat
leaves, with delicate spires all along the edges, and all of so deep a
crimson they surely would attract any child.

What a queer flower! like the backbone of a fish with all the little
bones at the side standing out stiff and pointed, and all in pinks and