THE MICEOSCOPIST IN BERMUDA. 125 



very well understand. Other slow moving animals accomplish 

 the same purpose by means of an intermediate and more active 

 generative form. We shall even have a further instance of this 

 before we close. But in all other cases the second or abnormal 

 generation is a budding a natural outgrowth from the first like 

 a flower bud from its stem. And it is the second, like the flower 

 bearing its seed, which produces the eggs from which grow again 

 the parent form. But in the case of the Echinus, it is the par- 

 ent form which is the bud, the ova producing only the inter- 

 mediary, or the nurse as it is called. One would suppose that 

 if these slow and stupid urchins should happen to produce a 

 being livelier than themselves, and better fitted to get a living 

 on the high seas, this latter animal would repeat itself, perpetu- 

 ating the variation; certainly not reverting to the original form 

 in the clumsy way that the Phi tens does. However, I ain not 

 here to settle differences among the doctors; but simply to tell a 

 few life histories of the lowly tribes of the sea-shore. 



The Echinus has several relatives which live in the same waters 

 with itself. They are however very strange relatives, being in no 

 manner like it in external appearance ; and they would hardly 

 have been mistrusted to be of the same family, if they had not 

 been discovered to have the same peculiarity of producing ova 

 which developed into another kind of animal, out of which they 

 themselves grew, in some way or other, like parasites. This is 

 the case with the star-fishes, the feather-stars, the crinoids, the 

 sea-cucumbers, arid the worms called Chirodota and Synapta. 



These latter are very much like large angle worms, and live in 

 holes in the sand and under stones lying very near low-tide mark. 

 They are of great interest to the microscopist, from the fact that 

 in their skins are found, in great quantity, the wheel plates and 

 the anchor plates which make some of the most beautiful speci- 

 mens of his cabinet. The anchors of the Synapta I can imagine 

 to be of some sort of use to the worm in making its way in and 

 out of its hole in the sand. I have held it up by merely touch- 

 ing it with my finger. But whatever can be the use of those 

 beautiful wheels of the Chirodota, with hub and spokes and rim, 

 made of the clearest calcareous glass, and laid away in such pro- 



