40 A Day with the Sea Urchins.

 

Sea Urchins know nothing of Mr. Gladstone and
Home Rule, I am glad to say, and so no one thought
of disputing her authority. “The Queer can do ne
wrong,” was their motto, and a very good one it is
too.

How shall I describe to you the beauties of the, sea
fairies’ banqueting hall? It was a vast cavern, which
must have stretched far under the island. Lovely pillars —
of quartz rock and veined gypsum, alternately supported
a ceiling of pure transparent white, which looked like’
alabaster, studded all over with precious stones of ‘large
size, which shone and glittered like stars. The floor was
of the finest and brightest golden sand, and round the
base of each pillar was arranged what appeared to me
to be lovely flowering plants and ferneries ; a group of
plants round one, and a fernery round the next, and so on
along the hall, but I found they were in reality trees of
various coloured coral and seaweed, covered with the
-most splendid anemonies, alternating with seaweedertes,
where such tiny delicate green fronds—far more beautiful
than any mosses or ferns you ever saw growing on land—
were flourishing amongst the shining stones and shells ;
little cascades of water, looking exactly as if they were
lighted by electricity, gushed out of the pillars over them
and kept them swaying backwards and forwards, and up
and down, with the softest and most graceful motion
possible. !