198 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 



lamps burning at once, and every wave as it rose 

 and fell was all aglow with Nature's fireworks, 

 which do not burn the fingers, and leave no smell 

 of sulphur. 



So the little Favosites kept scudding along in 

 the water, dodging from one side to the other to 

 avoid the ugly creatures that tried to eat him. 

 There were crabs and clams of a fashion neither 

 you nor I shall ever see alive. There were huge 

 animals with great eyes, savage jaws like the beak 

 of a snapping turtle and surrounded by long 

 feelers. They sat in the end of a long round shell, 

 shaped like a length of stove-pipe, and glowered 

 like an owl in a hollow log ; and there were smaller 

 ones that looked like lobsters in a dinner-horn. 

 But none of these caught the little fellow, else I 

 should not have had this story to tell. 



At last, having paddled about long enough, 

 Favosites thought of settling in life. So he looked 

 around till he found a flat bit of shell that just 

 suited him. Then he sat down upon it and grew 

 fast, like old Holger Danske in the Danish myth, 

 or Frederic Barbarossa in the German one. He 

 did not go to sleep, however, but proceeded to 

 make himself a home. He had no head, but be- 

 tween his shoulders he made an opening which 

 would serve him for mouth and stomach. Then 

 he put a whole row of feelers out, and commenced 

 catching little worms and floating eggs and bits of 

 jelly and bits of lime, — everything he could get, — 

 and cramming them into his mouth. He had a 

 great many curious ways, but the funniest of them 

 all was what he did with the bits of lime. He kept 



