dence of their affinity with higher organizations 

 having a backbone. 



Many are here, however, of a far more tem- 

 porary kind. These are those travelers who, stray- 

 ing in from the sea during the height of the tide, 

 have tarried too long and were left to linger 

 momentarily in the deepest of the ditches. And it 

 is among these stragglers that are to be found those 

 forms and fantasies which betoken beings of 

 another, but strange and beautiful, world. 

 Floating colonial hydroids, amazing bright blue 

 or pink transparent campanulate animal-forms at- 

 tached along a common stem at the top of which 

 is a fairy-like float of clustered flowers, tenuous as 

 dream-stuff, swing rhythmically along through the 

 water, swaying with graceful motion. Bewitching, 

 too, are the medusse, or little jellyfish forms of 

 hydroids: drifting translucent disks of azure with 

 veins of violet, pulsating like spectral hearts — 

 or maybe rose-colored bells bearing around the rim 

 a row of tentacles, impalpable, yet visible as in 

 combing the surrounding water in search of food 

 their treacherous undulations reflect the soft luster 

 of crimson satin strands. 



[318] 



