244 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



nothing, unless yon have a man and crowbar with you 

 to turn over the big stones. Under these stones the 

 animals crawl and nestle, chuckling, no doubt, at your 

 zoological despair in the helj)less endeavour to get at 

 them, but lauo^hino^ on the other side of their mouths 

 (by a remarkable anatomical mechanism not yet ex- 

 plained) when they find that you have outgeneraled 

 them, and have overturned their bastions. And yet 

 this love of darkness is very paradoxical. Some of 

 them, especially Annelids, are so impatient of the 

 light that they speedily die in your jars and bottles, 

 unless abundant shadows protect them. The Actinise 

 are stimulated by the light ; or perhaps it would be 

 more accurate to say that the effect of light upon the 

 sea- weed oxygenates the water, and thus makes the 

 Actiniae more vivacious. Some Actinise — the Daisies, 

 for example — habitually flaunt in the exposed glare of 

 sunlight ; but the majority, like all worms, Crustacea, 

 and most Molluscs, retire into the darkest shade they 

 can find. 



This has a paradoxical air, when we reflect on the 

 paramount importance of light among vital agencies. 

 In darkness the infusoria, it is said, will not develop. 

 In darkness the plant withers. Try to rear a plant in 

 darkness, and no amount of heat, air, or moistiure (the 

 other vital agencies) will stimulate it to the processes 

 of real growth. Deprived of light, it is deprived of 

 food, and the possibility of food. It then lives entirely 

 on its own substance, like a starving animal ; the store 

 of food which was in the seed is used up, but no new 



