THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 105 



a hand or a net of finest hairs, clutching at some- 

 thing invisible to our grosser sense. That is the 

 Pyrgoma, parasitic only (as far as we know) on the 

 lip of this same rare Madrepore ; a little " cirrhipod," 

 the cousin of those tiny barnacles which roughen 

 every rock (a larger sort whereof I showed you on 

 the Turritella), and of those still larger ones also 

 who burrow in the thick hide of the whale, and, 

 borne about upon his mighty sides, throw out their 

 tiny casting nets, as this Pyrgoma does, to catch 

 every passing animalcule, and sweep them into the 

 jaws concealed within its shell. And this creature, 

 rooted to one spot through life and death, was in its 

 infancy a free swimming animal, hovering from place 

 to place upon delicate ciliae, till, having sown its 

 wild oats, it settled down in life, built itself a good 

 stone house, and became a landowner, or rather a 

 glebse adscriptus, for ever and a day. Mysterious 

 destiny ! — yet not so mysterious as that of the free 

 medusoid young of every polype and coral, which 

 ends as a rooted, tree of horn or stone, and seems to 

 the eye of sensuous fancy to have literally degene- 



