LOW- WATER MARK. 99 



bead-like filaments. The cord itself is wonderfully 

 long, sometimes from twenty to forty feet, and spreads 

 ont like a meadow of waving grass under water. 



Storms tear it up and cast it ashore, but, though 

 worthless for our album, it often bears a rich harvest 

 of zoophytes. I remember well how beautiful it was 

 in Bembridge Harbour, fringed with the feathery 

 JPhimularia. Rocking in a little boat, and looking 

 down into the calm, sunny water, I could see millions 

 of living creatures moored by the stalwart cord and 

 rising or falling with the tide, which brought them in 

 food enough and to spare, of delicate diatoms from the 

 deep ocean beyond. 



Chorda Lomentaria is simply a variety of Chorda 

 Filum ; but do not throw it away, especially if it has 

 tufts of fine yellowish hair growing upon it. These 

 tufts are a curious microscopic plant called 



MYKIOTKICHIA. 



(A. name signifying " a thousand hairs.") 



There are two species often on the same cord — IiLy- 

 riotricMa Filiformis and Myriotrichia Clavceformis. 



They are transparent delicate filaments, beset at 

 irregular intervals by short papiliform ramuli, among 

 which we find spherical spore-cases full of dark 

 spores. 



ODONTHALIA DENTATA. 



(Name from two Greek words, signifying " tooth" and "germ, or 

 branch.") 



I have never found this myself, because it is pecu- 



G2 



