230 THE AQUARIAN NATURALIST. 



men, all busily employed in tearing from the rocks 

 the valued edible. Yes, the villas of Cicero and of 

 Lucullus, the Brighton of Imperial Rome, had occu- 

 pied that strand, or been submerged beneath these 

 waves ; and over tessellated pavements and sculptured 

 columns, plainly visible, now crawled Echini and 

 Star-fishes. 



The eggs of the Echinus, when first hatched, give 

 birth to creatures exactly resembling infusorial ani- 

 malcules, or perhaps we ought rather to say, the newly- 

 born ciliated offspring of the Medusse, described in a 

 preceding chapter; but they soon change their ap- 

 pearance, and are then found swimming about as 

 Plutei, very much resembling those from which the 

 Ophiuri derive their origin (PL IV. fig. 1 b). The 

 form of the Pluteus of an Echinus is, however, of a 

 slightly different shape : its body is composed of a 

 colourless transparent jelly, dome-shaped behind, ex- 

 panded and slightly hollowed out in front, and pro- 

 longed inferiorly into straight slender legs, in which 

 delicate rods of calcareous matter are perceptible, 

 forming a kind of framework. Were the creature to 

 stand upon these, it would in fact almost exactly re- 

 semble a French clock, such as we see on our chimney- 

 pieces, the pendulum being represented by a pro- 

 boscis-like mouth and its appendages : nothing indeed 

 could be more remote in appearance from the Echinus 

 into which it will be ultimately transformed. The 

 little creature is in this stage of its existence a free- 

 swimming animalcule, and propels itself, with its base 

 and processes directed forwards, by means of powerful 

 cilia grouped in two bunches on the sides of its 



