STRANGE MARINE CREATURES. 221 



without notice, our wonder is continually excited by 

 the variety of phase, and often by the uncouthness of 

 form, under which some of the meaner creatures are 

 presented to us. And this is very specially the case 

 with the inhabitants of the sea. We can scarcely 

 poke and pry for an hour among the rocks at low-water 

 mark, or walk with an observant downcast eye along 

 the beach after a gale, without finding some oddly- 

 fashioned, suspicious-looking being, unlike any form 

 of life that we have seen before. The dark, concealed 

 interior of the sea becomes thus invested with a fresh 

 mystery ; its vast recesses appear to be stored with all 

 imaginable forms, and we are tempted to think there 

 must be multitudes of living creatures whose very 

 figure and structure have never yet been suspected. 



" Sea ! old Sea ! who yet knows half 

 Of thy wonders or thy pride ! " 



Yet so full and close has been the attention with 

 which the naturalists of the last hundred years have 

 studied the forms and afiinities of organic existence, 

 that all these strange beings find their place in the 

 arranged systems of Nature ; and it is rare indeed to 

 discover an animal or plant so diverse from those 

 abeady familiar to us, that we are compelled to isolate 

 it, or even to express micertainty as to its general 

 relations. 



Among the treasures sent me by Mr. Kingsley was 

 a specimen of the Rough Syrinx [Syrinx nudus), 

 called by Pennant the Tube Worm. I presume it 

 must be an unusually fine one of its kind ; for though 

 it was my first acquaintance with the strange creature, 



