SEA-WOEMS. 181 



" Nor was it merely with tlie edible that we busied our- 

 selves on these journeys : the brilliant metallic plumage of 

 the Sea-Mouse [Ajjhrodita) , steeped as if in the dyes of the 

 rainbow, excited our admiration time after time. And still 

 higher wonder used to be awakened by a much rarer An- 

 nelid, brown and slender as a piece of rope-yarn, and from 

 tliirty to forty feet in length, which no one save my uncle 

 had ever found along the Cromarty shores, and which, when 

 broken in two, as sometimes happened in the measuring, 

 divided its vitality so equally between the pieces that each 

 was fitted (we could not doubt the experiment of Spallanzani) 

 to set up an independent existence and carry on for itself. 

 The Annelids too that form for themselves tubular dwelhngs 

 built up of large grains of sand always excited our interest. 

 Two hand-shaped tufts of golden-hued setse, furnished how- 

 ever with greatly more than the typical number of fingers, rise 

 from the shoulders of these creatures, and must, I suspect, 

 be used as hands in the process of building ; at least, the 

 hands of the most practised builder could not set stones 

 with nicer skill than is exhibited by these Worms in the 

 setting of the grains which compose their cylindrical dwell- 

 ings, — dwellings that, from their form and structure, seem 

 suited to remind the antiquary of the round towers of Ire- 



