The Framework of the Bird 67 
growing on the end of long stalks. We call them almost 
plants. But they hold a secret from the crabs and snails 
which crawl about, and when the fishes brush against 
Fic. 43.--A colony of living Boltenia, photographed by the author in the Bay 
of Fundy. ‘The Boltenia is one of Nature’s failures to make a vertebrate. 
The larva is active and has a notochord; the adult is degenerate and fixed 
onastem. Found in five fathoms and deeper off rocky coasts north of Cape 
Cod. 
them—if their poor dull senses only knew it—they 
might claim a blood-brotherhood. When they were 
young, for a little while, a gelatinous notochord was 
theirs also, but this, with all the hopes that such a be- 
