56 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



are organs. "VVliy then do tliey live and wriggle? and of 

 wliat are they organs ? The first question is easier to ask 

 than to answer. The second is as easy to answer as to ask ; 

 so, like an adroit teacher, who evades difficulties to drop with 

 confidence on what is easy, I will answer it. In the preced- 

 ing Chapter (p. 24) I recorded with some minuteness the find- 

 ing of a Terehella buried in the sand, its long thread-like 

 tentacles waving in the air being all that was visible, until 

 it was dug up. Those tentacles are what you have in the 

 phial before you. While examining the worm, I observed 

 that one of its tentacles had been torn off", and was wTiggling 

 with independent vivacity : I bethought me of trying how 

 long these organs would live separated from the body ; .so, 

 cutting them all off", I placed them in this phial. This was 

 on the 21st May ; on the 2oth some died ; but to-day is the 

 27th, and there are still several vivacious. What would 

 your friends, who constantly compare the vital mechanism 

 to a watch or a steam-engine, say to this ? The main-spring 

 was broken long ago ; the watch is in shreds, yet are its 

 wheels as active as ever. Do you not perceive the error of 

 the analogy ? Do you not see that every part of a vital 

 organism must be vital, having its own vital properties, and 

 being, in a certain sense, independent of the Avholc, although 

 also dependent on it ? 



Nin- is this by any means a solitary instance. Even those 

 physiologists who compare the organism to a mechanism are 

 familiiir with hundreds of facts of independent vitality. Tlie 

 one just cited is, however, one of the most remarkable I have 

 observed, on account of the length of duration. The other day 



