Ossian Collection > Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland > Volume 4

b MARINE ANJMALS.
when others were studying the poetry ; would have been
arranging- a duty on jalap or tobacco pipes, while the
statesman was extending the commerce of his country,
or would have returned from a seven years' residence in
Greece and Italy, with the measure of an ogee in his
pocket.
But let others lift the gauntlet which I have only
touched. As I leaned over the tafFrel, it seemed as if all
the rubies and sapphires and emeralds with which
Arabic poetry has decorated the fairies of the ocean, were
swimming by in the bright sun. A carkanet of this sub-
marine jewellery was soon caught, and proved to be an
unknown animal, no less extraordinary in its mechanism
than splendid in its colouring. The catalogue-maker
would call it a Beroe : but it is not. We are always most
struck by the mechanical contrivances of nature, when
they most resemble our own ; and not less so, when they
areoperose, and refined, in proportion to the insignifi-
cance, the insensibility, and the brief duration of the
animal. Except in the motion of swimming, this crea-
ture appeared as insensible as the cucumber which it
resembled in shape, and the jelly which formed its body.
Without head, or limbs, or heart, or blood, or nerves, its
life was probably limited to a very few days, and it was
the food, in thousands, of every gurnard or herring that
was swimming by. Yet, to enable this otherwise dull
and half vegetating animal to move, there was an appa-
ratus provided, which rivalled, as it resembled, the finest
metal work that mechanism ever produced. Eight tubes,
provided with circular pallets, and resembling chain
pumps, performed this office, by transmitting water: nor
could the nicest mechanic have constructed the machine
in any other manner, nor with more of artificial form and
accuracy, had the problem been given to him. With the
same materials, it was, of course, inimitable : of that size,