ZOOPHYTES 393- 



vivacity and peculiarly human character of their move- 

 ments, all the other members of their natural family that 

 I had ever seen or heard of, these curious creatures have 

 afforded much entertainment, not only to myself, but to 

 those scientific friends to whom I have had opportunities 

 of exhibiting them. When I see them surrounding the 

 mansion of the Sabella, gazing, as it were, after him as he 

 retreats into his castle, flinging their wild arms over its 

 entrance, and keeping watch with untiring vigilance until 

 he reappears, it seems to require no very vivid fancy to 

 imagine them so many guardian demons; and the Lares 

 of the old Koman mythology occurring to memory, I de- 

 scribed the form under the scientific appellation of Lar 

 Sabellarum. You may, however, if it pleases you better, 

 call them "witches dancing round the charmed pot." 



The Polypes that we have as yet been looking at are 

 all of simple structure individually, though some of them 

 we have seen united into a very populous community of 

 compound life. We will now look at some whose organ- 

 ization is of a higher, that is more complex, character. 



On this old worm-eaten oyster shell which has been 

 dredged up from the bottom of the sea you observe sev- 

 eral rounded lumps. They are of a cream-white hue, of 

 somewhat solid texture, tough and hard to the touch, and 

 studded all over with shallow depressions or pittings. The 

 largest of these is not more than an inch and a half in 

 height, by two-thirds of an inch in thickness; but speci- 

 mens often occur of twice or thrice these dimensions, and 

 much more divided than this; sometimes forming a rude 

 resemblance to a hand of stumpy round fingers of sodden 

 flesh whence the fishermen call the object, "Dead men's 

 fingers," or, sometimes, by a comparison equally apt, 



