THE ANNELIDES. 167 



has its delicately-formed branchiae (/), and its bristly feet (a 6), 

 serving both for locomotion, and for clasping their prey in a 

 deadly embrace. Clothed in robes of metallic brilliancy, these 

 beautiful worms of the ocean, to whom the naturalists have 

 given the most flattering names 

 of Greek mythology Nereis, 

 Euphrosyne, Eunice, Alciopa, 

 glide through the crevices of sub- 

 marine rocks, or conceal them- 

 selves among the water-plants, 

 or in the mud or sand at the 

 bottom of the sea. Here they 

 lie in wait for their prey, ready, 

 like the larger snakes of the dry 

 land, to dart forth suddenly upon 

 the first unfortunate crustacean 



or naked mollusc that heedlessly Foot of an Anneiide. 



swims by : but their care must be great not to be led too far 

 away by the ardour of the chase, for the sea swarms with their 

 enemies, and woe to the annelide that falls into the grasp of the 

 formidable cuttle-fish, or comes within the reach of the ferocious 

 crab, or meets the eye of the greedy eel for, once in the power 

 of these inexorable enemies, it must bid farewell to life ! 



Besides the erratic ann elides, which must be considered as the 

 most perfect of their class, the sea contains a large number of 

 sedentary worms, leading a solitary hermit-life, in tubes formed 

 by the mucus which is secreted by the skin, and which, while 

 hardening, commonly agglutinates together fragments of shells 

 and sand. Some of these sheaths are of extreme tenuity, others 

 as tough as thick leather, and many possess very considerable 

 hardness, being composed, in great proportion, of carbonate of 

 lime, like the shells of molluscs. As these tubicolar annelides 

 lead so very different a life from that of their roaming relations, 

 their internal structure may naturally be supposed to be very 

 different : for where is the living being whose organisation does 

 not perfectly harmonise with his wants ? Thus we have here no 

 bristling feet, or lateral -respiratory appendages ; but instead of 

 these organs, which in this case would have been perfectly use- 

 less, we find the head surmounted by a beautiful crown of feathery 

 tentacula, which equally serve for breathing and the seizure of 



