98 GLAUCUS ; OE, 



tlie live animal). These hands it puts down to its 

 mouth, generally in alternate pairs ; but how it 

 obtains its food by them is as yet a mystery, for its 

 intestines are filled, like an earth-worm's, with the 

 mud in which it lives, and from which it probably 

 extracts (as does the earth-worm) all organic 

 matters. 



You will find it stick to your fingers by the whole 

 skin, causing, if your hand be delicate, a tingling 

 sensation ; and if you examine the skin under the 

 microscope, you will find the cause. The whole skin 

 is studded with minute glass anchors, some hanging 

 freely from the surface, but most imbedded in the 

 skin. Each of these anchors is jointed at its root 

 into one end of a curious cribriform plate, — in plain 

 English, one pierced like a sieve, — which lies under 

 the skin, and reminds one of the similar plates in 

 the skin of the White Cucumaria, which I, will 

 show you presently ; and both of these we must 

 regard as the first rudiments of an Echinoderm's 

 outside skeleton, such as in the Sea-urchins covers 



