022 



RADIATA. 



Division IV. RADIATA. 



Once more we return to the Sea — for the whale, the porpoise, and tlieir allies, the finned and 

 scaled fishes of a thousand forms, the myriad hosts of the shelled mollnsca, the multitudinous 

 families of crabs, lobsters, and other Crustacea which inhabit it, have not yet completed the list 

 of animal wonders in this broad and boundless element. We now stand upon the sea-shore and 

 behold another form of creation — the Radiata, of which the star-fishes, corals, and madrepores are 

 familiar types. We have already described the structure of this Division of the Animal Kingxlora, 

 Vol. I., page 18, and at pages 29 and 30 have presented our Classification of it. What we have 

 still to add must be brief, but we shall offer abundant evidence that here, as everywhere else in 

 the works of Nature, there are exhaustless stores of curious and interesting knowledge. Though 

 we certainly find that we are descending, step by step, from the higher to the lower forms of 

 existence, and that we now approach animals which seem to put on the semblance of plants and 

 stones — many of them in fact taking their names from these objects — we shall discover that from 

 them the ocean chiefly derives the phosphoric glow which breaks in sparks and flashes in the wake 

 of the ship ; from them come some of the chosen ornaments of beauty ; from their labors have 

 sprung up some of the great islands of the sea, now crowned with all the glories of tropical vege- 

 tation. All the monuments of man — his cities, roads, edifices — from the beginning of his history, 

 are but as insignificant pebbles in comparison with the works of some of the very humblest of 

 these creatures we are about to contemplate. 



In short, we now enter that wonderful domain which the poet has so vividly described : . 



" Deep iu the wave is a coral grove, 

 Where the purple mullet and gold-fish rove ; 

 Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue, 



That never are wet with the falling dew ; 

 But in bright and changeful beauty shine, 

 Far down in the green and glassy brine. 



