A WALK UNDER THE SEA. 61 



have passed by, which transformed the aspect of continents, 

 but these relics lay here undisturbed unburied so slowly do 

 the sediments accumulate. 



But there is indeed life here. Sparse, quaint life ; and 

 the species are of archaic and embryonic forms ; that is, they 

 resemble creatures which lived in the earlier ages of the 

 world, or creatures which have undergone but a part of their 

 development crude, uncouth, and alien to the modern world. 

 Here are Crinoids, or Stone Lilies, which, in all other waters, 

 have perished from the earth save one species long known in 

 the Caribbean Sea. They are an antique type. But from 

 deep waters off the coasts of Florida and Norway, comes up, 

 with other forms, Rhiz-oc'-ri-nus, a genus which disappeared 

 from shallow seas unknown millions of years ago ; but here, 

 where nothing changes, it has perpetuated its existence 

 through half the history of the world. Between death and 

 the changeless life which here reigns, the difference is slight. 



Still more startling in their grotesqueness, are some of the 

 fishes which lie here more than half buried in the mud. Here 

 is one fashioned like a scoop-net. The long, slender body is 

 the handle, and the net is an enormous pouch under the chin, 

 which would take in the whole of the body three times over. 

 Another hangs like an open wide-mouthed meal-bag. In this 

 case, also, the bag hangs suspended from the part where the 

 throat should be. The diminutive body is noticed as an ap- 

 pendage attached to the back side of the bag. It is known by 

 the fins. Four of these bodies might be contained in one 

 pouch. A different, but equally erratic form brandishes an 

 attenuated body like a whip-lash appended to an enormous 

 head, exposing an eye which is nearly half its own diameter. 

 Still again, we note a shark-like form, with enormous gape 

 and horrid teeth, having a range of spines along each side of 

 the slender body, above and below, and, most curious of all, 

 a long, thread-like organ depending from beneath the chin, 

 with a tassel-like tentacle bearing structures for feeling, at the 

 end. Indeed, this reminds us of the piano wire with dredge 

 at the end, which went feeling for examples from this so-called 



