ANTHOZOA HYDROIDA. 101 
Or ruder hand of man, turmoil excite 
Throughout their briny realm, then brightly shine 
These ocean gems, these glow-worms of the deep.—D. L. 
I shall now close these preliminary observations with an 
extract from a letter from my kind friend Mr. Wigham, of 
Norwich, received at the very time I was writing them, 
though he knew not that I was so engaged. 
“In September we had a prodigious quantity of Mustra 
membranacea and Laomedea geniculata on the Norfolk coast, 
and, probably, on all the east coast, as I saw remains of them 
in Essex in the latter end of the month. The P/ustra I had 
never gathered before. There were waggon-loads of it, chiefly 
on Fucus vesiculosus and Fucus nodosus. The Laomedea 
was on everything,—old branches of trees, cuttings of fir- 
deals, chips, etc.; and a piece of very hard cinder as big as 
my fist was quite covered with it, and so beautifully phos- 
phorescent, that long after it was dark I was strolling about 
the beach at Cromer, stirring them up, and admiring their 
surpassing beauty. The sea was beautifully luminous that 
evening also, and I certainly thought that the zoophytes 
being so very numerous would very well account for it, as 
there must have been many billions of them in the water.” 
