COMMON OBJECTS OF THE SEA FLOOR 



anemone. They are also found striped with brown 

 or grey, but when taken out of the water it is 

 hard to believe that they are the same creature, 

 for they are so filmy and flimsy that it is astonish- 

 ing how they hold together at all. They are not 

 even like jelly, in substance they resemble noth- 

 ing but themselves. 



In some parts of the sea one comes upon great 

 numbers of sea urchins, or sea eggs as they are 

 called in the Bahamas. There is a village of the 

 black ones on the hither side of the lighthouse. 

 Sometimes they are armed with long spines and 

 sometimes short ones. Most of them have thin 

 spines, but there are some varieties which have 

 thick pencils, but slightly smaller where they join 

 the shell. These pencils are used by the children 

 in the South Seas for slate pencils. Immediately 

 round Nassau, however, this species is not com- 

 mon. The commonest is certainly the large black 

 one, with spines like long knitting needles. They 

 are not at all nice things to tread on, for if the 

 tip of one of these spines lodges in the flesh it is 

 exceedingly hard to get out; they are extremely 

 brittle and covered with almost invisible barbs. 

 Though they are not, as is commonly supposed, 

 poisonous, wounds caused Joy any sea creature 

 are liable to become infected very easily, espe- 

 cially in hot climates. They should be cared for 

 at once. 



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