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for the coral-islands between Xew Holland and New Guinea^ 

 in the bays of which the animals are found abundantly. 



Worms or .4 11 lie! Ids. 



Many people dislike the mention of a worm. This is not only 

 owing to the traditional repugnance felt by educated persons 

 for many of the lower animals, but also to the fact that the 

 habits and resort of the few species known to non-scientific 

 people are disagreable. Dusty earth-worms, bloodthirsty leeches, 

 tapeworms, trichines, such are the creatures generally thought 

 of when worms are mentioned, leaving out the serpents, snakes , 

 caterpillars, and other repulsive creatures often included in 

 the list. 



But in the sea there live a quantity of worms belonging to 

 the very same genus as the despised earth-worm: namely, the 

 Annelids, or marine worms , which, in delicacy of form and 

 beauty of colour, are in no way inferior to the anemones or 

 other beautiful inhabitants of the sea. The reader will find this 

 statement confirmed on casting a glance at the annelid-tank 

 in the Aquarium, which rather resembles a garden planted with 

 miniature, beautifully-coloured palmtrees than a collection of 

 a worms. There , on slender stems , wave feathery spiral 

 crowns belonging to the Spirographis; there the Protula 

 shoots forth *bright,- red tassels of a similar form from a white 

 calcareous tube; while in another place a confused mass of such 

 tubes seems set with hundreds of many-coloured little brushes, 

 all as delicate as flowers, reminding one more of the children of 

 the goddess Flora than of animal-forms. And yet all these crea- 

 tures are real worms, which have built these leathery or calca- 

 reous tubes for the protection of their soft bodies, and the above 

 mentioned feathery palm-like crowns springing from their hei-ds- 

 are the membranes of their gills. Touch one of these tiny crowns 

 ever so slightly, and it will instantly disappear into the tube; 

 the worm has returned into its shell, with which it is in no 

 place actually connected, and waits a little until the supposed 

 danger has passed. Then, slowly and carefully, the bunch of 

 feathers , looking just like a camels-hair brush , will begin to 

 peep out of the orifice of the tube, and by and bye again spread 

 in full beauty. Even a slight shaking of the water will frighten 

 some of these worms into their shells, and in the smallest kinds 

 this sensitiveness goes so far that they feel even a momentary 

 darkening of the tank caused by the passing of a cloud. 



