BAENACLES. 223 



SO the process is continually repeated while this season 

 of activity endures. 



Now, by putting this specimen into a glass trough, 

 and placing it under a low power of the microscope, 

 we shall see what an exquisite piece of mechanism it 

 is. The little hand consists of twenty-four long fingers, 

 of the most delicate tenuity, each composed of a great 

 number of joints, and much resembling in this respect 

 the antennae of a Beetle. These fingers surround the 

 mouth, which is placed at the bottom of the sort of im- 

 perfect funnel formed by their divergence. They re- 

 solve themselves into six pairs of arms, for each one is 

 branched from the basal joint, dividing into two equal 

 and similar portions. Those nearest the mouth are the 

 shortest, and each pair increases regularly in length to 

 the most distant, which are the central pair when the 

 hand is extended. Each division of each of this longest 

 and most extensile pair comprises, in the specimen be- 

 fore us, thirty-two joints, while the shortest consists of 

 about ten, the intermediate ones being in proportion ; so 

 that the whole apparatus includes nearly five hundred 

 distinct articulations, a wonderful provision for flexi- 

 bility, seeiug that every joint is worked by its own 

 proper system of muscles. 



Moreover, every separate joint is furnished with its 

 own system of spinous hairs, which are doubtless deli- 

 cate organs of touch, since it has been established that 

 the hairs with which the shelly coate of Crustacea are 

 studded, pass through the substance of the latter, and 

 communicate with a pulpy mass, richly supplied with 

 nerves, which lines the shell.* These hairs project at 

 a more or less wide angle from the axis of the finger- 

 * Proo. Royal Society, ix. 215. 



