The oceanic beings know better how to recognize their presence, letting them filter through their bodies for the renovation and coloration of their organs.

The copper accumulates in their blood; the gold and silver are discovered in the texture of the animal-plants; the phosphorus is absorbed by the sponges; the lead and the zinc by species of algae.
Every oceanic creature is able to extract from the water the residuum from certain metals dissolved into particles so incalculably tiny that no chemical process could ever capture them.

The carbonates of lime deposited by the rivers or dragged from the coast serve innumerable species for the construction of their coverings, skeletons, and spiral shells.

The corals, filtering the water across their flabby and mucous bodies, solidify their hard skeletons so that they may finally be converted into habitable islands.
The beings of disconcerting diversity that were floating, diving, or wiggling around Ferragut were no more than oceanic water.

The fish were water made into flesh; the slimy, mucilaginous animals were water in a gelatinous state; the crustaceans and the polypi were water turned to stone.
In one of the tanks he saw a landscape which appeared like that of another planet, grandiose yet at the same time reduced, like a woods seen in a diorama.