THE WONDERS OF THE SHOKE. 99 



the whole body of the animal. (See on Echinus 

 Miliaris, p. 89.)* Somewhat similar anchor-plates, 

 from a Eed Sea species, Synapta Vittata, may be 

 seen in any collection of microscopic objects. 



The animal, when caught, has a strange habit of 

 self-destruction, contracting its skin at two or three 

 different points, and writhing till it snaps itself into 

 "junks," as the sailors would say, and then dies. My 

 specimens, on breaking up, threw out from the wounded 

 part long " ovarian filaments" (whatsoever those may 

 be), similar to those thrown out by many of the Sagar- 

 tian anemones, especially S. parasitica. Beyond this, 

 I can tell you nothing about Synapta, and only ask 

 you to consider its hands, as an instance of that 

 fantastic play of Nature which repeats, in families 

 widely different, organs of similar form, though per- 

 haps of by no means similar use ; nay, sometimes 

 (as in those beautiful clear-wing hawk-moths which 

 you, as they hover round the rhododendrons, mistake 



* An admirable paper on this extraordinary family may be found 

 in the Zoological Society's Proceedings for July, 1858, by Messrs. 

 S. P. Woodward and Lucas Barrett. See also Quatrefages I. 82, or 

 Synapta Duvemasi. 



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