126 GLAUCUS ; OR, 
head,”? which we picked up just now on Paignton 
Sands? Or which, again, by its more beautiful little 
congener,” five or six of which are adhering tightly 
to the slab before us, a ball covered with delicate 
spines of lilac and green, and stuck over (cunning 
fellows !) with stripes of dead sea-weed to serve as 
improvised parasols? One cannot say that in him 
we have the first type of the human skull: for the 
resemblance, quaint as it is, is only sensuous and 
accidental, (in the logical use of that term,) and 
not homological, 7.c. a lower manifestation of the 
same idea. Yet how is one tempted to say, that 
this was Nature’s first and lowest attempt at that 
use of hollow globes of mineral for protecting soft 
fleshy parts, which she afterwards developed to such 
perfection in the skulls of vertebrate animals! But 
even that conceit, pretty as it sounds, will not hold 
good; for though Radiates similar to these were 
among the earliest tenants of the abyss, yet as 
early as their time, perhaps even before them, had 
been conceived and actualized, in the sharks, and in 
1 Amphidotus cordatus. 2 Echinus miliaris, Plate VII. 
