400 EVENINGS AT THE MIOEOSCOPE. 



seems to require no very vivid fancy to imagine tliem 

 so many guardian demons ; and the Lares of the old 

 Roman mythology occurring to memory, I described 

 the form under the scientific appellation oi Lar Saiella- 

 rum. You may, however, if it pleases you better, call 

 them " witches dancing round the charmed pot." 



The Polypes that we have as yet been looking at 

 are all of simple structure individually, though some 

 of them we have seen united into a very populous com- 

 munity of compound life. We will now look at some 

 whose organization is of a higher, that is, more complex 

 character. 



On this old worm-eaten 03'ster shell which has beeji 

 dredged up from the bottom of the sea, you observe 

 several rounded lumps. They are of a cream- white hue, 

 of somewhat solid texture, tough and hard to the touch, 

 and studded all over with shallow depressions or pit- 

 tings. The largest of these is not more than an inch 

 and a half in height, by two-thirds of an inch in thick- 

 ness ; but specimens often occur of twice or thrice 

 tliese dimensions, and much more divided than this ; 

 sometimes forming a rude resemblance to a hand of 

 stumpy round fingers of sodden flesh — whence the 

 fishermen call the object, "Dead men's fingers," or, 

 sometimes, by a comparison equally apt, " Cows' paps." 

 To zoologists it is known as Alcyonium digitatum. 



Certainly there is nothing very attractive in these 

 white lumps, as they now appear ; but then they are 

 now in undress ; they do not expect to see company 

 out of water. Their drawing-room is beneatli the 

 waves, in some submerged cave of ocean, where the 

 sun's ray never penetrated, and where the only light 

 is that dim green haze refiected from the sand and 



