THE "SYOXDERS OF THE SHOUE. 95 



spines of lilac and green, and stuck over (cunning 

 fellows !) with strips of dead sea-weed to serve as 

 improvised parasols ? One cannot say (though 

 Oken and the Okenists might) that in him we 

 have the first type of the human skull ; for the 

 resemblance, quaint as it is, is only sensuous and 

 accidental, (in the logical use of that term,) and 

 not homological, /. c. a lower manifestation of the 

 same idea. Yet how is one tempted to say, that 

 this was Nature's first and lowest attempt at 

 that use of hollow globes of mineral for pro- 

 tecting soft fleshy parts, which she afterwards 

 developed to such perfection in the skulls of 

 vertebrate animals. But even that conceit, 

 pretty as it sounds, will not hold good ; for 

 thouprli Radiates similar to these were amoner 

 the earliest tenants of the abyss, yet as early as 

 their time, perhaps even before them, had been 

 conceived and actualized, in the sharks, and in 

 Mr. Hugh Miller's pels, the old red sandstone 

 fishes, that very true vertebrate skull and brain, 

 of which this is a mere mockery.* Here the 

 whole animal, with liis extraordinary fccding-mill, 

 (for neither teeth nor jaws is a fit word for it,) is 



* See Professor Sedgwick's liist edition of tlic Uiscourscs 

 on the Studies of Cambridge. 



