i$2 TOILERS IN THE SEA. 



or four young individuals are often met with on the 

 body of their parent; and further, they are naked, 

 not being enclosed in a chitinous covering, as is the 

 case with the marine zoophytes. 



These facts will be borne in mind, that the animals 

 we are about to allude to, resemble miniature fresh- 

 water hydras, enclosed in a tube, and united together, 

 by thread-like prolongations of the body, into com- 

 pound branched colonies, of some hundreds of indi- 

 viduals, located, and enclosed within a common 

 home, in some sense like all the lodgers in a model 

 lodging-house, but with this difference, that there is a 

 connecting link which unites all of them, and hence 

 they are not entirely independent the one of the other. 

 Divested of the chitinous shell, the whole colony 

 would possess nearly the same form as that pre- 

 sented by the empty "skeletons" collected on the 

 beach ; the ultimate terminations of the branches, 

 and branchlets, being occupied by the miniature 

 hydra, which protrudes itself from the open end of 

 the branchlet, and waves its tiny tentacles in the 

 water, in search of food. It is a beautiful sight to 

 gaze down into a clear rock pool, and observe one 

 of these branched polyparies, with all its inhabitants 

 out of doors, (fig. 24) portions of the body being 

 thrust through the openings, at all the terminations, 

 and the tiny tentacles waving like a star, from each 

 individual, like flowers on an animated plant. At 



