SEA-URCHINS AND SEA-CUCUMBERS 335 



Thus we have another instance added to the ten thou- 

 sand times ten thousand of the wondrous wisdom of Grod 

 displayed in the least and most obscure things. "All thy 

 works shall praise thee, O Lord!" (Ps. cxlv. 10.) 



There is an order of animals which naturalists put in 

 the same category as the Sea-urchins, but which an un- 

 scientific observer would regard as possessing little or no 

 affinity with them. Some are like long, soft, and fleshy 

 worms and others, which come the nearest to the creat- 

 ures we have been looking at, have still the lengthened 

 form, which, however, so closely resembles that of a warty 

 angled cucumber that the animals I allude to are famil- 

 iarly called Sea-cucumbers (Holothuriadce). The marine 

 zoologist frequently finds them beneath stones at extreme 

 low water, and larger forms as big in every direction as 

 a marketable cucumber are occasionally scraped from the 

 bottom of the deep sea by means of that useful instrument, 

 the dredge. If you drop one of them into sea-water you 

 will presently see from one extremity an exquisite array 

 unfold like a beautifully cut flower of many petals, or, 

 rather, a star of ramifying plumes. Soon it begins to 

 climb the walls of your aquarium, and then you catch 

 the first glimpse of its affinity to the Urchins; for the 

 short warts which run in longitudinal lines down the 

 body, corresponding to the angles, gradually lengthen 

 themselves, and are soon perceived to be sucking feet, 

 analogous in structure and in function to those with which 

 the Star-fish and Sea-urchin creep along. 



But the relationship becomes more apparent still when 

 we find that the Cucumber has a skeleton of calcareous 

 substance deposited on exactly the same plan as in the 

 Urchin; viz., around insulated rounded cavities. It is 



