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 purples.

Right in the midst of another plot of thick, flat leaves rises a mass of pink sea-lilies, and they are beautiful; but do examine the next bed of leaves.  Are they not curious?  A thick, hollow-looking stem goes through the middle of them, and on one side of the stem they are a deep pink, on the other side, yellow.

Here are flowers shaped like horns and trumpets.  What a forest of pinks, greens, and yellows!  And here are the greens.  Such greens as you have never seen before.

Now suppose you were going to have a party.  What decorations you could have if only the ocean blooms would keep fresh for you to use.  There would be masses of fine furze that would be perfectly beautiful to crowd over the pictures; silky threads that, placed on creeping green plants, would look lovely carried along the table; yellow flowers in the midst of masses of fine sea-mosses, and sea-ferns would make your little mates wonder where the fresh, strange things grew.

And there could he yards and yards of ribbons.  Ribbons?  Yes, long, long sprays of yellowish green sea-ribbon, four or five inches wide, going down to narrower ones not more than an inch in width.

Perhaps you would like some sea-thistles.  Here they are, in thick bunches, fine and hairy, in faint, fair shades of green.  And what can this be that looks so much like a sponge?  Ah, it is a tuft of moss with green spires shooting up in the middle.

Take care!  Here are bunches of cactus with prickly leaves.  Look out! 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!