T^^S^O^rr^r^^^irs ■r:<r^ 



act of feeding; it had not even had time to swallow 

 its food, for its mouth and throat were crammed 

 with hydroids; and it was in this mass of tangled 

 material that I found, still alive but barely mov- 

 ing, a pycnogonid, or sea-spider, the pale and 

 colorless creature with whom I now hold solitary 

 vigil far into the small hours of the night. 



That this animal was yet living is not so extraor- 

 dinary as at first sight it may appear, and the rea- 

 son for this tenacious vitality will quickly become 

 clear, when presently we come to make a close 

 examination of its structure; but the point here I 

 wish to press is that it was due to the fact that it 

 was not dead when found, that proof is established 

 of the nearly simultaneous and positively recent 

 finish of the flat-fish and the angler. Had my find- 

 ing of the latter, and the consequent recovery of 

 the sea-spider, been long delayed, this new-comer, 

 too, would have perished; not from suffocation, 

 but from the poisons evolved in the angler's stom- 

 ach or from actual disintegration by the free 

 digestive juices. Yet even this experience was 

 more than its delicate nature could long survive. 

 In less than two hours after its removal to a jar of 

 clean cool sea-water, it released its hold on the 



[30] 



