SEPTEMBER, 1881. 51 



admirably adapted for clinging on to the deep sea algae 

 or zoophytes, and declining to be washed ashore. Indeed, 

 they become naturally entangled by their hooked limbs 

 in the small glass in which they were deposited, and 

 could with difficulty be disengaged. But what is this ! 

 we caught a gleam of irridescence from the midst of the 

 mud, and we soon drag from its enveloping dull coating 

 a little sea mouse, with its fringe of brilliantly irridescent 

 hairs, that make this one of the most remarkable creatures 

 to the collector. 



How impossible it is to appreciate all the beauties of 

 these annelides with their varied characters, and how 

 strangely they turn up sometimes ! What is that 

 gelatinous creature at the bottom of the empty pecten, 

 we mutter next day, as we bring the lens to bear upon 

 upon what appears to be a gelatinous yet fibrous mass. 

 But the more we examine it the more it sinks from view, 

 until nothing but a little jelly shows on the shell. We 

 return it to the water, and once more the jelly expands 

 into tentacles of most remarkable dimensions, and only 

 the closest investigation shows that there is a minute hole 

 in the shell, behind which an annelid is occupying a 

 serpula tube, from which it thrusts its tentacles through 

 the minute puncture in the shell ! The various serpulae 

 themselves are sufficiently deserving of attention, and 

 not only the houses they build for themselves, but the 

 animals that build them are notable. Why should 

 some of them twist their tubes into endless entangle- 

 ments, while others simply give one curl and curve up- 

 wards like a snake standing on a single coil ? 



In vain we attempt to evade the ascidians of all sizes, 

 they come up in multitudes in spite of us ; and full of 

 riches they are too. Delicate sertularia all over them, 



