350 EVENINGS AT THE MICROSCOPE. 



Now let us see the result. Yes, it is as I expected. 

 The united stimulus of the darkness and the sea-water 

 has acted on the Cow's pap, just as would the rising and 

 covering tide in its native cavern, after it had been left 

 exposed for some hours by the recess of the sea. It is 

 fully expanded, and is now as lovely as just now it was 

 unpleasing. 



In the first place it is swollen to twice its former dimen- 

 sions, and has acquired at the same time a semi-pellucidity, 

 and a more delicate hue. But in the place of the pits on 

 the surface (there were not more than half-a-dozen in this 

 little specimen, which makes it more suitable for ex- 

 amination), it is covered with tall polypes, standing out 

 on all sides, of crystalline clearness and starry forms, 

 each eminently beautiful in itself, and surrounding the 

 whole mass with a sort of atmosphere of almost invisible 

 and impalpable lustre peculiarly charming. 



Coy as these deep-water strangers are of displaying 

 their beauties in our glaring aquariums, they will bear 

 with equanimity a good deal of shaking, when once they 

 are expanded. Hence I may be able to transfer the 

 trough with its contents from the jar to the stage of the 

 microscope, and thus enable you to gaze on its details for 

 a little while, before the dull sensorium of the creature 

 is sufficiently warned of its ungenial position to cause it 

 to shut itself up and resume its ugliness. 



As the protruded polypes are exactly alike, it will be 

 enough to confine our attention to one. It is an elevated 

 tubular column of translucent substance, terminating in 

 an expanded flower of eight slender pointed petals, which 

 spring outward with a graceful swell, so as to give the 

 form of a shallow bell to their general outline. The base 

 springs, like the foot of a tree, from the margin of a cell, 

 which penetrates the substance of the mass, into which we 

 can see far down, and into which the whole of the now 

 extended and expanded blossom was withdrawn when we 



