842 Submarine Architecture. 



nature of the assemblage. We first of all notice particularly 

 the Serpulas. These form convoluted tubes in abundance, which 

 are wreathed together and mixed up with other habitations in 

 glorious confusion. Prominent amongst them is the noblest of 

 the race, S. contortuplicata, the most easily identified as it 

 pops up its feathery head and blows its coral trumpet in the 

 midst of its meaner relatives, 8. triquelra, intricata, filifornis, 

 and rurjosa, all of them abundant, covering the smooth surface 

 of the bottle with tubular and angular constructions, and, in 

 some places, running together into inextricable knots, the tubes 

 overlaying each other, and leaving only just enough room for 

 their several gill threads to peer out like the red faces of a crowd 

 in the street, where the faces are all that can be distinguished. 

 Filograna implexa, with its thread-like tubes, may just be iden- 

 tified in the midst of two distinct blocks of Serpulce, but its 

 scarceness is compensated by the crowded state of the masses 

 from which myriads of gill fans are protruded. Equally con- 

 spicuous, though less attractive, are the oysters. I have since 

 counted eighteen oysters in all upon the bottle. While in the 

 boat, and our attention divided between inquiry and admiration, 

 we agreed that, as regards oysters, it was ' ' smothered •/' a con- 

 clusion of far too sweeping and general a kind. Tet we were 

 then not far from the truth, because after counting off eighteen 

 distinct and veritable oysters, there remain some two dozen 

 more little oysters of the size of split peas, embedded in masses 

 of Serpulce, Balani, and Spirorbis. But though less attractive 

 still, because untenanted, we agree that the most curious ele- 

 ments in the construction are two shells near the base, firmly 

 cemented and embedded in a mass of sponges and Tubuli- 

 pora. How came they there ? Were they attached during 

 the life of the animals, or after the shells had ceased for ever 

 the service they were ordained for in the individual life of the 

 creatures ? One of these is an old weather-worn valve of Gar- 

 dium ecliinatum; the fellow- valve may be there below it, but 

 is not to be distinguished amidst the mass of masonry of which 

 the visible shell is the principal foundation. It is embraced at 

 both edges by Serpula contortuplicaia. S. triquetra doubles 

 over and over like a miniature coil of rope, which the sea boy 

 has confused, and will be sorely puzzled to restore to order ; and 

 at the margin it melts away all round into a mass of little 

 oysters, Membranipora, and the remains of Flustra, Terebella, 

 and sponges. The other is a shell of Buccinum undatum in a 

 far advanced stage of disintegration. It lies far out from the 

 base of the bottle, with its operculum cemented to the back of 

 a large oyster-shell of six or seven years old. It is coated all 

 over with acorn barnacles ; the operculum is connected with the 

 oyster-shell by a mass of sponge, and several commixed wreaths 



