considerable population which had been hidden 

 underneath. Small shrimp-like animals, transpar- 

 ent as glass, iridescent isopods and amphipods — 

 crustaceans all — went skittering away from this 

 common center like the fragments of a great jewel 

 bursting in the sunlight, suddenly to disappear 

 into the soft bottom or secrete themselves beneath 

 some other rock or within the folds of an Ulva 

 frond. Some there were, however, that did not 

 partake in the general panic; these were a large 

 gleaming specimen of the common sand-worm, 

 Nereis virens, and several small related forms 

 so inconspicuous that their presence would prob- 

 ably have been unnoticed had not some of them 

 clung to the transported stone. 



Now although Nereids are common, we saw at a 

 glance that great gorgeous specimens such as this 

 were not too common; whereupon, it was taken 

 up by my Faithful Assistant to be transferred 

 to its future home in the laboratory where it would 

 serve at once as a living ornament, as an object of 

 study and as a sort of pet. For strange and peculiar 

 as it may seem in a worm, the highest of them (and 

 Nereis stands near the very top of the class) are 

 amenable to a certain amount of familiarity on the 



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