60 THE WONDER OF LIFE 



first animals Charles Darwin worked at, or growing into 

 calcareous tufts as if in mimicry of corals ; myriads of 

 Crustaceans, such as water-fleas, acorn-shells, beach- 

 fleas, sandhoppers, no-body crabs, sea-slaters, shrimps, 

 hermit-crabs, and shore-crabs proper ; strange sea-spiders, 

 neither crustaceans nor spiders, like Pycnogonum littorale, 

 clambering among the seaweeds and hydroids ; an occa- 

 sional insect and even myriopod about high tide mark ; 

 spiders in the caves and among the dry rocks ; bivalves 

 innumerable, such as cockles and mussels, oysters and 

 razor-fish ; herbivorous gasteropods like periwinkles, and 

 voracious carnivores like the dog- whelks and buckies ; 

 sedentary limpets with a slight range of movement and a 

 slight memory for locality, since beyond a narrow radius 

 they fail to find their way home ; an occasional cuttle- 

 fish caught in a shore-pool and many more further out ; 

 a large representation of ascidians or sea-squirts, both 

 simple and compound, which lie at the base of the Verte- 

 brate series ; thelancelets (Amphioxus) buried all but their 

 mouth in the fine sand ; true shore-fishes Like sand-eels 

 and gunnels and shannies ; an occasional reptile like the 

 lizard Amblyrhynchus which swims out among the rocks, 

 or a poisonous sea-snake, or a turtle coming ashore to lay 

 her eggs ; numerous shore-birds like oyster- catcher and 

 rock pipit, gull and cormorant ; and an occasional mammal 

 like otter and seal on the whole a more representative 

 fauna than in any other life-area. 



We must not, of course, include among the shore animals 

 strayed pelagic forms, such as jellyfishes, which are often 

 stranded in enormous numbers. Millions of inwafted 

 " Night-Light " Infusorians, Noctiluca, sometimes form a 

 reddish brown ridge on the beach, but one might as well 



