海底兩萬里 第309期 第23章 珊瑚王國(8)
The light from our glass coils produced magical effects at times, lingering on the wrinkled roughness of some natural arch, or some overhang suspended like a chandelier, which our lamps flecked with fiery sparks. Amid these shrubs of precious coral, I observed other polyps no less unusual: melita coral, rainbow coral with jointed outgrowths, then a few tufts of genus Corallina, some green and others red, actually a type of seaweed encrusted with limestone salts, which, after long disputes, naturalists have finally placed in the vegetable kingdom. But as one intellectual has remarked, "Here, perhaps, is the actual point where life rises humbly out of slumbering stone, but without breaking away from its crude starting point."
我們的蛇形玻璃管中的光學(xué)，照在這些天然的凹凸不平的拱形建筑物上面，照在像水晶燭臺(tái)一般安排著的、火星點(diǎn)綴起來的下垂花板上，時(shí)時(shí)。發(fā)生魔術(shù)般迷人的力量，在珊瑚的叢枝中間，我又看到一樣新奇古怪的珊瑚樹，海虱形珊瑚，節(jié)肢蝶形珊瑚，又有些團(tuán)聚成堆的珊瑚，有的是青，有的是紅，真的像是鋪在石灰地上的海藻，這些珊瑚堆，生物學(xué)家經(jīng)過長久的討論后，才明確地把它們列入植物中。但根據(jù)一位思想家所指出，“它：們或者就是生命剛從無知覺的沉睡中掙扎起來，又還沒有完全脫離礦物的物性。
Finally, after two hours of walking, we reached a depth of about 300 meters, in other words, the lowermost limit at which coral can begin to form. But here it was no longer some isolated bush or a modest grove of low timber. It was an immense forest, huge mineral vegetation, enormous petrified trees linked by garlands of elegant hydras from the genus Plumularia, those tropical creepers of the sea, all decked out in shades and gleams. We passed freely under their lofty boughs, lost up in the shadows of the waves, while at our feet organ-pipe coral, stony coral, star coral, fungus coral, and sea anemone from the genus Caryophylia formed a carpet of flowers all strewn with dazzling gems.
走了兩個(gè)鐘頭，我們到了t9百米深的地方，那地方就是珊瑚在上面開始形成的最后邊界。但在這里的，不是孤立隔開的珊瑚叢，不是低樹林的叢木，而是，廣大的森林，巨大的礦物草木，粗大的石樹，由那些海葛藤，漂亮好看的羽毛草花圈壞結(jié)合起來，受到各樣色彩和反光的點(diǎn)綴，非常好看。它們的高大樹枝深入海水陰暗中不見了，我們就在下面自由自在地走過，我們腳下有管狀珊瑚，腦形貝，星狀貝，菌狀貝，石竹形珊瑚，形成一條花卉織成的地毯，現(xiàn)出光輝奪目的各種顏色。
