266 THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. 
obliges him, gives you a better opportunity for closer observa- 
tion. Place only a shell or stone covered with serpulas or 
cymospiras, into a vessel filled with 
sea-water, and you will soon see how, 
in every tube, a small round cover 
is cautiously raised, which hitherto 
hermetically closed the entrance, and 
prevented you from prying into the 
interior. The door is open, and 
soon the inmate makes his appear- 
ance. You now perceive small buds, 
here dark violet or carmine, there blue or orange, or variously 
striped. See how they grow, and gradually expand their 
splendid boughs! They are true flowers that open before your 
eye, but flowers much more perfect than those which adorn your 
garden, as they are endowed with voluntary motion and animal 
life. 
At the least shock, at the least vibration of the water, the 
splendid tufts contract, vanish with the rapidity of lightning, 
and hide themselves in their stony dwellings, where, under 
cover of the protecting lid, they bid defiance to their enemies. 
Not all the tubicole annelides form grottos or houses of so 
complete a structure as those I have just described. Many 
content themselves with agglutinating sand or small shell- 
fragments into the form of cylindrical tubes. But even in 
these inferior architectural labours of the Sabellas, Terebellas, 
Amphitrites, &c., we find an astonishing regularity and art; 
for these elegant little tubes, which we may often pick up on 
the strand, where they lie mixed with the shells and alge cast 
out by the flood, consist of particles of almost equal size, so 
artistically glued together, that the delicate walls have every- 
where an equal thickness. The form is cylindrical, or funnel- 
shaped, the tube gradually widening from the lower to the upper 
end. Some of these tubicoles live like solitary hermits, others 
love company ; for instance, the Sabella alveolaris, which often 
covers wide surfaces of rock, near low-water mark with its 
aggregated tubes. When the flood recedes nothing is seen but 
the closed orifices ; but when covered with the rising waters, the 
sandy surface transforms itself into a beautiful picture. From 
Serpula, attached to a Shell. 
