24 HYDROZOA. 



turn, become the prey of creatures higher in the scale of life ; 

 they, therefore, form the basis of that mighty pyramid which 

 bears upon its apex Man himself. They are the boundaries be- 

 tween life and death, the steady barrier of the organic world, and 

 although until a few years ago man was ignorant of their very 

 existence, they have not the less been actively employed since 

 first creation dawned. As individuals, they are weak enough ; 

 but in their countless legions they become perhaps the most im- 

 portant agents in the grand economy of Nature. A grain of sand 

 is but a despicable atom viewed alone ; but when upon the beach 

 these sands present themselves arrayed in the:r broad phalanx, 

 where can we obtain a stronger bulwark to oppose the raging 

 storm ? 



CHAPTER V. 

 CORALLINES. HYDROZOA.* 



lt T N the army of Xerxes there was a certain race called Sagar- 

 J_ tians. The mode of fighting practised by these men was 

 this : When they engaged an enemy, they threw out a rope with 

 a noose at the end ; whatever any one caught, either horse or 

 man, he dragged towards himself, and those that were entangled 

 in the coils he speedily put to death." HERODOTUS, vii. 85. 



Never was there more truth than in the old saying, " There is 

 nothing new under the sun." Who would have supposed, while 

 reading of the strange feats performed by the Brazilian with his 

 lasso, by the aid of which he literally takes the bull by the horns, 

 or trips up the. fleetest steed, that the same weapon was used ages 

 ago to catch Greeks by the neck, instead of horses ? much less 

 could we have imagined that an onslaught apparently so uncouth 

 and barbarous was the mode of warfare of a very considerable 

 proportion of the animal creation ; and yet, seriously speaking, 

 this is the case, the only difference being that the lassos employed 

 by mankind ark clumsily made of twisted leather, whereas their 

 prototypes present a delicacy and refinement of structure, which 

 it requires the utmost penetration of the miscroscope to reveal. 

 There is an animal easily obtainable in summer-time by simply 

 scraping off the slimy surface from the sticks or leaves that float 

 on almost every pond, called 



* Hydra, the Hydra ; faov, zoon, an animal. 



