312 COMMON OBJECTS OF THE SHORE. 



we touch it, it stains the hand with a yellow 

 fluid. 



Every one, in rambling about our shores, must 

 have seen weeds, shells, stones, and other objects, 

 which have long been lying under water, covered 

 with twisted calcareous tubes, sometimes crowded 

 together in masses, and most curiously intertwined 

 in each other. At other times the tube is found 

 occupying a single shell. Sometimes square pieces, 

 formed of dozens of tubes unattached to any object, 

 lie upon the beach or are dredged up from the sea, 

 but the most frequent cluster of them is on some 

 old oyster-shell, which they will cover with their 

 coils like so many little stony serpents ; several 

 species often congregating together. The shelly 

 tubes are made by the different kinds of Serpula, 

 secreted, like the shell of the mollusk, by the worm 

 itself; but, unlike that shell, unattached by muscles 

 to the animal within, and unadorned by brilliant 

 colours. But if the shell is less gay, the beautiful 

 animal within may vie with the most richly-tinted 

 mollusk, both in colour and in graceful form. If 

 placed in a vessel of salt-water, the tiny creature 

 soon emerges from its tube, presenting to our view 

 a brilliant coronal of gorgeous scarlet or rich 

 purple, a fan-like array of plumes which serve it 

 for organs of respiration, and which, moving up 

 and down in the water, awaiting such prey as they 

 may find available, are beautiful as the most 

 elegant feathers. 



Among the commonest of our native species 

 is the Vermicular serpula (Serpula vermicularis) , 

 whose white tapering rugged cylinders adhere to 

 plants and stones, or curved in all forms are 

 cemented to the surface of some refuse shells, 



