These grove-like growths spring up like spots of light just where the meeting of the surface currents rain down a manna of diminutive dead bodies.

The twisted limestone plants, hard as stone, are really not plants at all, but animals.

Their leaves are simply inert and treacherous tentacles which contract very suddenly, and their flowers, avid mouths, which bend over their prey, and suck it in through their gluttonous openings.
A fantastic light streaks this world of darkness with multicolored shafts, animal light produced by living organisms.

In the lowest abysses sightless creatures are very scarce, contrary to the common opinion, which imagines that almost all of them lack eyes because of their distance from the sun.

The filaments of the carnivorous trees are garlands of lamps; the eyes of the hunting animals, electric globes; the insignificant bacteria, light-producing little glands all of which open or close with phosphorescent switches according to the necessity of the moment,--sometimes in order to persecute and devour, and at others in order to keep themselves hidden in the shadows.
The animal-plants, motionless as stars, surround their ferocious mouths with a circle of flashing lights, and immediately their diminutive prey feel themselves as irresistibly drawn toward them as do the moths that fly toward the lamp, and the birds of the sea that beat against the lighthouse.
None of the lights of the earth can compare with those of this abyssal world.