would invite almost certain death from the attack 

 of one or more of the hundred enemies who are 

 always lurking near. How and where this mason 

 obtains its materials for the structural marvel in 

 which it is permanently housed, would seem to be 

 as difficult to determine as the manner of their 

 deposition . . . But the reply to questions such as 

 these is only to be got by work; to-night I intend 

 merely to play; so I leave the worm and its prob- 

 lems to continue my excursion over the shell — but 

 I leave not without the reservation that some day 

 I will look more closely into this affair. 



IV 



I am hovering over a vast valley paved with 

 perforated ovoid cobblestones having the color of 

 pale-rose and the diaphaneity and texture of fine 

 porcelain, and whose centers each bear a ghostly 

 corolla of filamentous petals. The eerie feeling 

 which this great garden of spectral flowers en- 

 genders is enhanced still more by the presence of 

 three great eldritch forms rearing phantom-like 

 from the valley floor . . . Caprellida . . . 



Such, briefly, are the sight and sensation first 

 conveyed by a close-up of the coralline patch pre- 



[140] 



