18 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



From my own modern bucket quaint things came 

 forth, — innumerable tiny crabs and shrimps, per- 

 fectly disguised in the yellow-brown colors of the 

 weed and even reproducing on their carapaces the 

 shapes and tinges of the blemishes and parasites 

 on their vegetable home; absurdly attenuated 

 pipefish, hardly to be detected when in motion, so 

 exactly could they imitate the undulation of a 

 waving frond; naked mollusks, or Nudibranchs, 

 incredible creatures that must be seen to be be- 

 lieved and cannot be described ; infinitesimal worms 

 and snails, furnishing food for larger forms and 

 themselves finding some microscopic fodder in their 

 watery jungle; and each species wrapping itself 

 in a cloak of invisibility and melting into its back- 

 ground with magical completeness. The common- 

 est crab was undoubtedly that which Columbus col- 

 lected, and which bears the name of Planes minutus. 



On the scattered bits of sargassum which we sal- 

 vaged, I found many hints of the spring which was 

 to come to this strange land of sea tares. Masses of 

 snail eggs, — some in many-celled stages, like di- 

 minutive parodies of golf-balls, others with active 

 embryos pushing and straining to break through 

 the membranes and begin that series of hopes and 

 fears which both snails and we call life. Now and 

 then were skeins of fish eggs tangled inextricably 

 among the fronds, — linear nurseries of thousands 

 of brothers and sisters. 



I took a little three-inch frond of weed into the 

 laboratory and watched it under my binocular 

 microscope. I pretended the common little inhabi- 



