THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE, 117 
transformed into a pale pink flower of stone. That 
is the Madrepore, Caryophyllia Smithii (Plate V. 
fig. 2); one’ of our south coast rarities: and see, 
on the lip of the last one, which we have carefully 
scooped off with the chisel, two little pink towers 
of stone, delicately striated; drop them into this 
small bottle of sea-water, and from the top of each 
tower issues every half-second—what shall we call 
it?—a hand or a net of finest hairs, clutching at 
something invisible to our grosser sense. That is 
the Pyrgoma, parasitic only (as far as we know) 
on the lip of this same rare Madrepore; a little 
“cirrhipod,’ the cousin of those tiny barnacles 
which roughen every rock (a larger sort whereof 
I showed you on the Turritella), and of those larger 
ones also who burrow in the thick hide of the 
whale, and, borne about upon his mighty sides, 
throw out their tiny casting nets, as this Pyrgoma 
does, to catch every passing animalcule, and sweep 
them into the jaws concealed within its shell. And 
this creature, rooted to one spot through life and 
death, was in its infancy a free swimming animal. 
