70 THE SEAS 



Fjords, many of which descend abruptly from the shore 

 dowTi to depths of five hundred fathoms or more. Many 

 of the animals taken in the dredge are of extraordinary 

 interest and beauty, but we can here only refer to a few 

 representative types. On rocky bottoms there are masses 

 of the stony coral, Lophohelia, which forms branching 

 colonies bearing delicate polyps like orange-flowers on a 

 yellow bush, with it are often great tree-like growths of the 

 giant gorgonid, Paragorgia, which is bright scarlet. Sea 

 pens (Plate 73) are common on soft bottoms, red, yellow or 

 brown in colour, and varying in length between a few 

 inches and a yard or more. Below one hundred and fifty 

 fathoms may be found the big bivalve, Lima excavata, often 

 six inches long and four or five inches wide, which has 

 bright orange tentacles and flesh, the latter being considered 

 a great delicacy by the fishermen. In similar localities the 

 dredge brings up numbers of lamp shells or Brachiopods, 

 representatives of an extremely old, and probably dying, 

 group of animals which have a bivalved shell enclosing the 

 body and hardly to be distinguished by the casual observer 

 from the bivalve molluscs. There are, however, many 

 differences, the shell valves are unequal in size, have a 

 different kind of hinge and the animal is attached to rocks 

 by a small stalk which passes through a hole in the larger 

 half of the shell. Starfish and brittlestars are exceptionally 

 abundant, the latter including the fine specimens of 

 Gorgonocephalus (Plate 28), the long arms of which divide 

 and sub-divide to form a writhing mass of tentacles like the 

 hair of the Medusa it has been named after. Large red 

 and brown sea cucumbers are very common, and also 

 deep-sea sponges some with root-like extensions for anchor- 

 ing themselves in the mud, and others which grow on rock, 

 one such, named Geodia, forming great rounded masses, 

 often many feet across, dead white in colour and of 



