RED-BLOODED WORMS. 297 



thrown overboard at the anchorage of San Domingo, in 

 that island. Sharks are always, and justly so, detested 

 by the sailors, and they ever experience a certain savage 

 delight in hacking them to pieces with their knives, 

 before life is extinct ; and there really is something very 

 unpleasant in the quiet splashings of these voracious 

 monsters, when they are numerous round a ship, and 

 something very revolting in the greedy pertinacity with 

 which they seek the filthy garbage and offal thrown over- 

 board. 



Annelides are observed in great numbers along the flat 

 shores of some of these islands! Vermiform, and slow- 

 moving, they mostly exist blindfold, and buried in the 

 sand ; while a few are provided with articulated members 

 and move freely about. The Eunice tubicola lives in a 

 long horny, transparent tube, within which, strange to 

 say, it can readily turn end for end. The tube is fur- 

 nished at one extremity with a delicate valvular apparatus, 

 which allows the water to flow but in one direction. The 

 skin of some of these Annelides is soft, and covered with 

 a slimy secretion, and I have seen one species cover itself 

 with loose calcareous grains, like the huge dark-coloured 

 Holothuria of the coast of Ibugos. They, however, ap- 

 pear to be, for the most part, helpless and indolent beings, 

 not possessed of much activity, but vegetating in their 

 dark abodes, leading lives insignificant and obscure. 

 Some few, however, as the Nais and Scyttis, would seem 

 to repudiate such an accusation, seeing that they enjoy a 

 greater latitude of locomotion, with the possession of 

 senses much more developed. They are very difficult to 

 preserve entire, owing to the facility with which their 



