124 THE OCEAN 



known. A number of these early forms of 

 marine animals are shown in the illustration 

 on the opposite page. 



A person unacquainted with these mysteries 

 of ocean life would never connect a tiny, live- 

 ly, rapidly-swimming creature, such as shown 

 in Fig. 3, with the prosaic, immovable oyster, 

 and yet this odd being is merely an oyster in 

 its childhood, so to speak. So also the baby 

 starfishes swim gaily about in their youth and 

 appear as in Fig. 4, and the youngsters of 

 many other shellfish travel hither and thither 

 upon the surface of the sea in early life. Per- 

 haps the strangest of all such creatures are 

 the barnacles, for the shell-clad barnacles, 

 which we find attached to rocks and other sub- 

 merged objects, are in reality true crustaceans 

 like crabs and lobsters, and in their young 

 stages swim about readily and appear as in 

 Fig. 9. Even young corals swim about and 

 in many cases baby crabs and the young of 

 other free-moving or swimming animals bear 

 no resemblance to their parents. 



Although science has established the iden- 

 tity of many of these odd creatures and has 



