BENEATH TROPIC SEAS 



At the end of the evening I went up to the 

 laboratory and spent an hour or two watching 

 what, to me, is one of the most dramatic things in 

 the world — whether in the ovum of frog or worm. 

 This is the slow, almost eclipse-like creeping across 

 the face of the fertilized egg, of the crease marking 

 the first division into two cells, then four, eight, 

 sixteen and so on. And I was sorry I had spoken 

 in a derogatory way of sea -worms, for they had 

 taken me wholly outside myself for an hour and 

 permitted me to witness life, birth and death, and 

 a concentration of energy and enthusiasm which 

 put to shame any of my half-hearted attempts at 

 mere description. 



We have a literary catch-phrase, — "he was trans- 

 figured with emotion" — which may be applied most 

 literally to these nereid worms of the sea. I sent 

 a bottle of several to an eminent authority and he 

 said at first it was quite impossible to identify 

 them for they were in full breeding condition — 

 known as the heteronereis phase. To a non-anneli- 

 dist, it sounded like being unable to recognize a 

 peacock because it had a train, or a tanager when 

 it assumed its scarlet body plumage. Eventually, 

 with consummate skill, by dissecting out the jaws, 

 the professor to whom I had applied was able to 

 call it Nereis glandulata. It is an astonishing fact 

 that when full-grown but still living in crevices or 

 tubes on the sea-bottom, these worms have many 

 generalized characters by which they can easily 

 be recognized, but at the approach of the free- 



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