262 MISCELLANEOUS. 
ved with difficulty, from being liable to entangle itself in every foreign 
substance, and is easily mutilated in its struggles for liberation. 
None have survived longer than twenty-four days. They generally 
live only a week. 
The only specimen shewing an air-bubble was fig. 17 ; and in this 
specimen I am induced to think the pencils at the extremity of the 
limbs should be shewn as cleft. 
An animal called the Briarean scolopendra, represented in the Plates 
of the voyage of MM. Quoy and Gaymard, bears much resemblance 
to the preceding, only the posterior extremity is greatly prolonged. 
It was found in the Straits of Gibraltar. 
I have not observed any other representation of it. 
Prats XXXVI. 
Fic. 17. Nereis phasma—The Spectre Nereis—as delineated by Mr Peter 
Syme, enlarged. 
16. Another specimen. 
11. Enlarged limb of fig. 16, shewing the cleft. 
The study of transparent animals is commonly attended with great 
embarrassment. We are frequently uncertain whether we actually be- 
hold them or not—whether they are entire or mutilated. 
8. OcroDACTYLUS INHHRENS.—Plate XXXV. Figs. 1, 2. 
Among the decrees of Nature, the least comprehensible is that which 
ordains the preservation of one animal by the destruction of another: her 
ostensible cares are directed to the safety of her creatures ; therefore there 
seems a strange inconsistency that life shall be sustained only at the ex- 
pense of life. 
But there are, besides, innumerable examples, where living animals 
are infested by multitudes of parasites, to their torment, if not to their 
destruction. They are consumed as the prey of generation after genera- 
