COMMON OBJECTS OF THE SHORE. 293 



rally distributed than this common species, though 

 occurring, in some places, in abundance ; but the 

 Opossum-shrimp (My sis Fabricii), represented by 

 our figure, is almost as plentiful. Its name relates 

 to the pouch or bag which holds the eggs in the 

 female shrimp. 



Who has not looked upon sea and sky on such 

 a scene as that described by the poet : 



" Star after star, from some unseen abyss, 

 Came through the sky, like thoughts into the mind, 

 We know not whence ; till all the firmament 

 Was throng'd with constellations, and the sea 

 Strown with their images." 



Was it the bright reflection of the glittering orbs 

 of heaven, of which the poet sang when he wrote 

 these lines ? Did their bright images, strown over 

 the calm surface of the waters, on some still sum- 

 mer evening, suggest the poetic resemblance to the 

 thoughts coming we know not how, arising from 

 some association of which even those who are most 

 intellectually observant can take no cognisance? 

 And yet his statement would have been no less 

 true, had he been thinking of the literal fact of the 

 multitude of star-like forms with which the sea is 

 teeming forms so radiant, and some of them so 

 bright with phosphorescent light, that even the 

 peasant calls them star-fishes, and the philosopher, 

 ever in some sort a poet too, once said of them, 

 " As there are stars in the sky, so there are stars 

 in the sea." Assuredly, both sea and shore are 

 strewn with myriads of starry animals, though 

 they are few in number compared with what they 

 were in those olden ages, of which fossil remains 

 tell us, when star-fishes, of extinct and beautiful 

 forms, affixed to stalks, waved in multitudes in the 

 seas, and having performed their appointed living 



