don't catch your toe in those sea-ferns. Even that sweet green
maiden-hair fern might pin down your foot so firmly that it would take a
fish's sharp tooth to set you free.

You may ask, why are not these beautifully colored and curiously shaped
things brought on shore and sold, as they might be, for much money? And
why are they not at least put where Folks can see, learn about them, and
admire them?

But wait a moment; what would be the effect if any one took a bunch of
your garden roses, pinks, or lilies, put them under water, and kept them
there? They would very soon be a drooping, shapeless mass. They are
formed for a different element, and could not nourish under water,
especially salt water.

Just so ocean-flowers, and sea-tints can only live in their own element,
which is not air, but water. And the faces on our water-pansies--for we
have them--would soon fade in what to them would be lifeless air, just
as the garden pansies would lose their bright faces in the salt sea.

Great quantities of seaweeds float ashore and are often dried and used
as fuel, or perhaps are put around garden plants to make them grow.

But nothing that grows on the land, or in the water, can exchange places
one with the other and keep alive. It is all very curious, and more than
I can understand. Yet every creature and every plant is fitted to the
place it grows in, and is natural to it. The food, the flowers, and the
land for the use of Folks, and the food, the plants, and the water for
the use of fishes, are just what the nature of each requires. What
wisdom!