for few creatures of the sea are more difficult to 

 maintain and keep alive, more difficult of study. 



And yet I am far from satisfied ... As I sit 

 here in the silence of the night, solitary, pondering 

 over the remains of this pycnogonid parent and 

 his brood, there is a certain aspect to this wholesale 

 dying business which continually presents itself 

 from behind the shadowy curtain of my puzzled 

 thoughts. The death of the large individual I can 

 at least account for, if not understand. An injury 

 or some cause which had to do with its capture 

 and confinement could have been a probable rea- 

 son for its fatality; but surely these reasons cannot 

 be urged with equal force concerning the successive 

 and rapid dying-off of plainly unharmed young. 

 This remains a mystery, intriguing, tantalizing, 

 until finally and with startling suddenness the 

 truth-revealing realization flashes full across my 

 consciousness . . . Bit by bit, a half-forgotten 

 memory now returns, and I recall how on a former 

 occasion, early in my contacts with the sea, I 

 chanced upon a spray of floating seaweed. Among 

 its gauzy branches was a minute creature covered 

 with ghostly parasites — each atom clinging 



[36] 



