The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-01-17
Gardens T%DER THE SEA
Wonderful Products of Nature Upon
the Bed of Old Ocean.

tHe beu Oh OtQ OCeuns
From the Popular Science News.
There is a wonderful country under the
sea, country of hills and plains of lofty
mountains and deep valleys, of rocks ana
caves. Its wide-spreading meadows are
covered with strange animal flowers that
move themselves about in search of living
prey, and its forests consist of branching
corals and sea-weeds taller than the lofti-
est trees. Tempests may rage fiercely
overhead, but a deep, unbroken silence
reigns always in this underworld, nor can
the widest hurricane that drives vessels
to wreckage move the most delicate ten
drill of the sea plants in the depths below.
Fragile creatures that fall to pieces al
most at touch spend their lives here in
quiet and security. The ocean depths,
which for mankind are regions of breath
lessness and death, are for billions of ami
mails the region of life and health; the
earth does not maintain nearly so many
living creatures as those that swarm in
countless myriads beneath the waves of
the ocean, Here are great purple sea
fans and lovely sea lilies and sea ferns and
sea cucumbers and sea mice and sponges
displaying bright colors that are lost the
moment they are taken from the water;
and here the rare and beautiful corals are
silently builded into reefs and islands.
II it ever be your good fortune to go to
Florida and visit the keys at the southern
end OF the state you may see a coral plan
tation, alive and growing. There is a ia
nous lighthouse, called Cary's Fortnight
off the coast there, from which such a
sight can be had. Carys Fortnight is
built In the open sea, without a foot of
land about it,. 1t is an iron framework Of
columns, strengthened by a network of
braces and the rooms in which lives the
keeper are about half way up to the light
out of the reach of the waves, forty or
fifty feet above the water.
balcony runs about these rooms, and
as the lighthouse is built over one of the
most beautiful and extensive fields of
coral known on this or any other coast
the sight presented on looking from this
balcony into the ocean is more wonder
full than can be well imagined by one who
has not seen it. The coral field spreads
out around the lighthouse as far as the
eye can reach, and so transparent is the
water that the ocean bottom can be seen
as plainly as a garden lying beneath
The coral field is largely made up of
what are called leaf corals, with large
fiat branches that grow one above anoth-
err chasing each other singly and in com
panies, darting about winding in and
out the corals as if in a game of hide
and-go-seek, and hundreds of fish play
among their spreading branches
Most of them are of very brilliant coll
,ors some of bright blue, others partly
blue and partly black, others again black
blended with yellow. and still others of
bright canary yellow beneath and rich
purple above. Now and then some large
fish shark perhaps passes by and all
the small fry scatter, hiding among the
corals, and are seen no more till their
enemy is out of sight.
Besides the leaf coral there are many
others even more beautiful to be seen.
Some are in the shape of huge vases,
some are like great globes, others branch
out as do the horns of the stag, and there
are more delicate branching kinds called
tinger-corals, and great numbers of sea
fans. The sea fans form the shrubbery
of the sea garden; they stand on the
ocean bottom on a sort of root, and. I'M
like the leaf and branching corals, which
are rigid and motionless they rise lightly
in the water and wave in the gentle I'M
dercurrents as II stirred by the wind
They are of many colors and. mingled as
they are with a kind of vegetable coral
called coraline, and with the bright red,
purple or orange colored sponges of the
Florida coast, you may well realize on
looking at them how surprisingly beau
tiful are the flower gardens of the sea.