VERMES THE WORMS 95 



but by reason of its abundance and its beauty, is Sabella 

 pavonina. It is about four inches long, and has a cluster 

 of plumes at its anterior end. It builds a tube which, in 

 size and consistency, can be very well likened to a piece of 

 rubber tubing, such as is used for infants' feeding-bottles, 

 grey in colour. This tube is about a foot long, and is 

 usually buried in the sand for rather more than half its 

 length, the free part standing out erect. The base of the 

 tube is always attached to a stone or a bit of shell. The 

 worm is rather flattened in form, and the anterior feet are 

 furnished with hooks, by which the worm travels up and 

 down its tube. 



At the head it has a series of narrow plumes. These are 

 so arranged that when the worm protrudes them from the 

 top of its tube they open out into a funnel-shaped flower, 

 about two and a half or three inches across. The plumes 

 are usually about seventy in number. They form rather 

 more than a complete circle, so the end of the row coils 

 inward, in the form a botanist would term " Convolute." 



In some specimens these plumes are deep red, in others 

 chocolate, but in the majority they are crossbanded red 

 and pearly white. 



They are found low down in tide level, a good spring 

 tide being necessary for their observation, and they live 

 chiefly among the Zostera, or on the edges of the sand, 

 mud, and gravel banks that occur in such neighbour- 

 hoods. 



In some such situations the visitor may see little forests 

 of these tubes stickinglup, best seen by stooping down 

 for a horizontal view. Some of these tubes may be vacant, 

 through the death of the tenant, but the majority will be 

 occupied. The occupied ones can always be identified by 

 their having a drop of water in them, rising in convex 

 form above the end. The empty ones are dry. No 

 worms, of course, will have their plumes expanded where 



