1894. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 169 



which to move about, a proposition he supports by ingenious 

 arguments, while admitting that further experiments (now actually 

 in progress) are necessary. While looking forward to the publication 

 of these further details, we would venture to commend this paper to 

 the special attention of certain of Mr, de Varigny's countrymen and 

 others in this country, as offering, by means of its figures, a magnifi- 

 cent opportunity for self-advertisement in the creation and naming of 

 limitless varieties and so-called new species. 



"A Moving Grove," Shakespeare. 



In our June number (vol. iv., p. 406) we had something to say 

 about the way in which animals were protected from discovery by 

 their resemblance in colour or form to surrounding objects. Now a 

 man, if he wishes to escape observation in this manner, does not 

 change his shape or the colour of his skin, but clothes himself in some 

 appropriate substance, or, hke the soldiers of Macduff when they 

 advanced on Dunsinane, hides himself beneath a covering of natural 

 objects. Just in the same way, though possibly without the same 

 conscious intent, certain of the very humble dwellers in our modern 

 seas take to themselves a cloak fashioned from the common objects 

 of the sea-floor. Thus, a certain coiled shell has received its name, 

 Xenophom, " stranger-bearer," from this very habit ; for the mol- 

 luscs of this genus attach to their shells, which are usually very thin, 

 such things as stones, shells and pieces of coral, which are found at 

 the bottom of the sea in which they dwell. Three such specimens 

 have recently been placed in the central hall of the Natural History 

 branch of the British Museum, one of them, Xenophora pallidula, from 

 Japan, and the others, ^Y. conchyliophora , from Bermuda. One of them 

 is covered with a number of other shells, and another with stones and 

 sand ; and it is interesting to see how large these foreign bodies are 

 in proportion to the fragile shell itself, and how completely they hide 

 it. Close by them there is exhibited a crab, Maia squinado, which 

 came from Plymouth, and is entirely covered by fragments of sea- 

 weed, sea-mats and sea-firs. These organisms are not merely grow- 

 ing on the shell of the crab, but are attached to it by the hooked 

 hairs with which the exposed surface of its body and limbs is clothed. 

 These cases are interesting enough, but a further and more 

 wonderful development of the same method of protection is found in 

 certain sea-urchins that inhabit the harbour of Kingston in Jamaica. 

 Their names are Toxopnenstes vaviegahis and Hippono'e esculenta, and unlike 

 many other sea-urchins or sea-eggs, as they are called in Jamaica, 

 these species do not stay at home in holes or crevices, but wander 

 about the smooth, hard bottom, in very shallow water, where many 

 sea-weeds are growing. But like other sea-urchins, these animals 

 are provided with little suckers or tube-feet, and while they use some 

 of these to drag themselves along, they use the suckers on their backs 



