I04 LEWIS : 



function, eliminating from the nutritious food the waste 

 material. 



Overlying the circulator)^ tubes, and probably in immedi- 

 ate contact with them, are lines of minute bars, each fur- 

 nished with cilia or hairs, in rapid and constant motion, 

 breaking the light into all the prismatic colors — red, orange, 

 yellow, green, blue and violet — with intermediate shades of 

 the loveliest and most delicate hues imaginable. The bars 

 are locomotive organs, and probably also sen^e respiratory 

 purposes, since, as long as life lasts, their cilia never for a 

 moment cease their activity. 



Corresponding with the circulatory tubes, and also with 

 the locomotive organs, are eight body lobes. Two on each 

 side are prolonged into lappets which rise above the mouth 

 and serve as fingers to aid in procuring food and in guiding it 

 to the mouth. Around these lappets the circulatory tubes 

 extend up one side and down the other, then descending into 

 the circulator}' chamber, the motion of the fluid being beauti- 

 fully seen, with a tremulous, half pulsatory throbbing within 

 the chamber, where they meet the tubes from the exterior lobes. 

 The two exterior lobes on each side are conjoined so as to 

 form a rounded mass, but little above the line of the mouth, 

 and from them circulator^' tubes are sent downward into the 

 circulatory chamber to meet and exchange their fluid with 

 that coming from the middle lobes and their lappets. It will, 

 therefore, at once be understood that these apparently helpless 

 masses of jelly, picked up from the sand of the beach, or 

 dipped from the sea, are in reality highly organized beings, 

 possessing muscles, possibly nerves, and assuredly a circula- 

 tory apparatus of extraordinary perfection. 



The group to which they belong is known as the Cteno- 

 pliora, or Comb Bearers, so termed on account of the comb- 

 like appearance of their locomotive organs, in which the bars 

 present a somewhat fanciful likeness to the head of a comb, 

 and the hairs or cilia to the teeth. 



Agassiz, who studied these animals minutely, regarded 



