2  JELLY-FISH, STAR-FISH, AND SEA-URCHINS. 
in their search are most likely to approach the keen 
happiness of childhood? If so, the image of the red 
sea-stars bespangling a mile of shining sand, or 
decorating the darkness of a thousand grottoes, 
must be joined with the image, no less vivid, of 
those crystal globes pulsating with life and gleam- 
ing with all the colours of the rainbow, which are 
perhaps the most strange, and certainly in my 
estimation the most delicately lovely creatures in 
the world. 
It is with these two kinds of creatures that the 
present work is concerned, and if it seems almost 
impious to lay the “forced fingers rude” of science 
upon living things of such exquisite beauty, let it 
be remembered that our human nature is not so 
much out of joint that the rational desire to know 
is incompatible with the emotional impulse to 
admire. Speaking for myself, I can testify that my 
admiration of the extreme beauty of these animals 
has been greatly enhanced—or rather I should say 
that this extreme beauty has been, so to speak, 
revealed—by the continuous and close observation 
which many of my experiments required: both 
with the unassisted eye and with the microscope 
numberless points of detail, unnoticed before, became 
familiar to the mind; the forms as a whole were 
impressed upon the memory; and, by constantly 
watching their movements and changes of appear- 
ance, I have grown, like an artist studying a face 
or a landscape, to appreciate a fulness of beauty, the 
esse of which is only rendered possible by the per 
cipt of such attention as is demanded by scientific 
