CHAPTER ONE 



A Seashore Laboratory 



I 



F you, perchance, be one of those in 

 [whom the drama of Nature has in- 

 stilled a yearning to penetrate the 

 [labyrinths of its esoteric plot; one in 

 iwhom there dwells that desire to re- 

 veal at first hand, or even vicariously, somewhat of 

 the mystery of that strange world just outside the 

 door; one in whom the love of living things — how- 

 ever lowly these may be — is of that order which 

 urges to a deeper, sweeter understanding: then, 

 Reader, you, more than any other, are privileged 

 to appreciate the significance of that sequence of 

 events which one Indian summer day led to my 

 renewed acquaintance with what is perhaps the 

 weirdest inhabitant of the oceanic realm — a realm 

 in which even many commonplace forms of its 

 life are preeminently bizarre, ghostlike, or spec- 

 tral . . . 



[3] 



