THE SICILIAN SEAS. 135 



rock in a homely gray garb by day, but all lustrous 

 with sparks of living flame toy night. Enormous dark- 

 blue Holothurice creep slowly along on the bottom, or 

 mount the perpendicular rocks by means of their 

 thousand vesicular feet ; and crimson and purple star- 

 fishes stretch out their long radiating arms, or curl 

 them hither and thither, as they sit on the projecting 

 angles. 



The Mollusca, some encased in stony shells, others 

 whose unprotected nakedness is compensated by their 

 gorgeous colours or elegant forms, go gliding along ; 

 while awkward, long-legged sea-spiders run over them 

 in their oblique courses, or pinch them with their far- 

 reaching claws. Other shapes, resembling our lobsters 

 and prawns, gambol among the weeds, seek for an 

 instant the surface, to touch the thin air, and then, 

 with one mighty stroke of their broad tail-plates, 

 instantly disappear, with the rapidity of birds, under 

 some friendly arch or overhanging tuft. And strange 

 beings are there, unknown to our colder seas : the 

 Salpce, curious mollusks, of glossy transparency, which, 

 linked together, form long swimming chains ; Heroes, 

 like globes of pure crystal, marked with meridian 

 lines ; Dipliyes, so transparent as only to be distin- 

 guished from the water in which they float when the 

 eye catches the reflection of light from their sides ; 

 and Stephanomice, long wreaths or strings of glassy 

 flowers, adorned with bright tints, but so evanescent 

 that, when transferred to a vase, they presently wither 

 away, and leave no trace, no cloud, no sediment be- 



