TOILERS IN THE SEA. 



themselves, eliminated and deposited as the bones 

 are built up in mammals. We are not disposed to 

 insist strongly on the absolute meaning of terms, 

 and are content to adopt a popular view, as most 

 suitable to our purpose, and in a broad sense to 

 accept these structures, in and about which the 

 animals reside, as their homes, whether they are 

 wholly located within them, or partially enclose them 

 with their own flesh. 



At first we had designed to confine ourselves 

 absolutely to such animals as lived in communities, 

 as for instance the coral-makers, the sea fanmakers, 

 the animals which inhabit sponges, sea-mats, and 

 those known at one time more particularly as 

 zoophytes, but now more specially as Hydroid 

 zoophytes, but by this arrangement we should have 

 excluded those minute, but widely diffused, animals 

 which construct those marvellous little shells known 

 to every microscopist as Foraminifera and Poly- 

 cystina. This would so much have diminished the 

 value of our volume in the estimation of those for 

 whom it was most of all designed, that the resolu- 

 tion was taken to widen the original scope so as 

 to include all the minute marine animals which con- 

 struct for themselves a permanent home. For whom, 

 then, do we suppose that we are writing? it may 

 be inquired, and for the information of those who 

 are not leaving this chapter to be the last that is 



