avoid discovery in the light of the morning s sun. 

 Not so, however, is the case with the females ; they 

 are built of hardier, if not sterner stuff; before 

 dawn arrives, each has found her way to the bot- 

 tom or to some hiding-place between the tide levels 

 on the shore. Still, although the lives of the males 

 are normally terminated within twenty-four hours 

 after the sexual swarming, few of them die a 

 strictly natural death. Shoals of carnivorous fishes, 

 hordes of swimming crustaceans, and flocks of 

 gulls hasten to the easy banquet offered by the 

 helpless millions. And in the wholesale glut which 

 ensues, short shrift is made of the teeming mass of 

 dying worms. 



IV 



"Come, look — see what I have found!" Again 

 it was through the quick-sightedness of my 

 Faithful Assistant that a discovery was made, to 

 which I am bound also to give more than a passing 

 notice. Particularly is this desirable as it will be 

 complementary to the foregoing dissertation which 

 dealt almost exclusively with the higher worms. 



These words breaking in on my consciousness — 

 I had been wholly lost in the contemplation of the 



[170] 



