wrought cup of Bohemian glass enameled with brilliant flowers,
held the sparkling liquid petals of that rosy sea. The surface, on
examination, proved to be covered with a thin brickdust layer of
infusoriae slightly tinged with orange. Placed in a white glass
bottle, this changed to a deep violet, but the wide surface of the
external sea was of that magnificent and brilliant rose-color. It was
a new and pleasing example of the lustrous, ever-varying beauty of the
ocean world. It was caused by diatomaceae, minute algae, which under
the microscope revealed delicate threads gathered in tiny bundles, and
containing rings, like blood-disks, of that curious coloring-matter in
tiny tubes.

This miracle of beauty is not without its analogies in other seas.
The medusae of the Arctic seas, an allied existence, people the
ultramarine blue of the cold, pure sea with vivid patches of living
green thirty miles in diameter. These minute organisms are doubly
curious from their power of astonishing reproduction and the strange
electric fire they display. Minute as these microscopic creatures
are, every motion and flash is the result of volition, and not a mere
chemic or mechanic phosphorescence. The _Photocaris_ lights a flashing
cirrus, on being irritated, in brilliant kindling sparks, increasing
in intensity until the whole organism is illuminated. The living
fire washes over its back, and pencils in greenish-yellow light its
microscopic outline. Nor do these little creatures lack a beauty
of their own. Their minute shields of pure translucent silex are
elaborately wrought in microscopic symbols of mimic heraldry. They are
the chivalry of the deep, the tiny knights with lance and cuirass, and
oval bossy shield carved in quaint conceits and ornamental fashion.
Nor must we despise them when we reflect upon their power of
accretion. The _Gallionellae_, invisible to the naked eye, can, of