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THE OCEAN WORLD. 



Were a traveller to tell us that lie had seen animals drop their eggs 

 upon forests of stone ; that these eggs, after executing their pro- 

 gressive evolutions, finally become individuals in all respects like their 

 parents, which attach themselves to the soil hy a root like any flower 

 of the fields, or to the mother stem like the branch of a tree, until in 

 due course they attained the adult state, when the flexible band which 

 holds them fixed either to the soil or parent- stem breaks, and the 



Fig. 109. Comatula Mediterranea (Lamarck), natural size. 



animal, now free, launches itself into the liquid medium, and goes to 

 live a proper and independent existence ; in listening to a recital so 

 opposed in appearance to the ordinary laws of Nature, we should be 

 inclined to tax the narrator of such incredible facts with error or folly. 

 Nevertheless all these facts are now perfectly established. The being 

 which presents these marvels has nothing of the fabulous about it. It 

 is the Comatula Mediterranea ; it lives at the bottom of the sea, the 

 surface of which is incessantly tracked by our vessels. 



