THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 181 
and other workers in disgusting employments, 
should be rewarded for their self-sacrifice in behalf 
of the public weal by some peculiar badge of 
honour, or laurel crown. Not that his crown, like 
those of the old Greek games, is a mere useless 
badge; on the contrary, his robe of state is composed 
of his fellow-servants. His whole back is covered 
with a little grey forest of branching hairs, fine as a 
spider’s web, each branchlet carrying its little pearly 
ringed club, each club its rose-coloured polype, like 
(to quote Mr. Gosse’s comparison) the unexpanded 
buds of the acacia.? 
On that leg grows, amid another copse of the 
grey polypes, a delicate straw-coloured Sertularia, 
branch on branch of tiny double combs, each tooth 
of the comb being a tube containing a living flower ; 
on another leg another Sertularia, coarser, but still 
beautiful; and round it again has trained itself, 
parasitic on the parasite, plant upon plant of glass 
ivy, bearing crystal bells,? each of which, too, pro- 
trudes its living flower; on another leg is a fresh 
1 Coryne ramosa. * Campanularia integra. 
