158 COLLECTING OBJECTS TO 



all kinds of colored stars, white, black, red, yellow, green, 

 orange : but all the same thing — an assemblage of ani- 

 ma ls — in fact, what is called a composite animal, and 

 mimed BotryUus. Each one of those stars is an animal ; 

 and what is more, an animal possessing a shell, and be- 

 longing to the same family as the whelks or Fun, al- 

 though its shell is not of so pretty a form as those 

 appertaining to the mollusca that we see crawling over 

 the shore. The shell in the BotryUus consists of separate 

 portions', called spiculce, which arc distributed through the 

 fleshy matrix. The natural history of the Botryttida . is 

 very little known ; but now that we have Aquaria, in 

 which they may be kept alive for some time at least, we 

 may hope to hear of some adventurous naturalist turning 

 his attention in this direction. You will find the Fusi and 

 stones in some places nearly covered with these BotryUus, 

 so as to conceal their forms, and rendering it difficult 

 to handle either stouo or fucus. 



See ! what is that on yon stone, looking somewhat 

 like a small garden-slug with a bunch of pink feathers up 

 on. his back ? It is an EoUs, and those beautiful pink, 

 club-like projections are not lungs or " branchial papilla, 

 as they were for a long time supposed to be ; but 

 branches of the intestine, as Mr. G. II. Lewes has 

 proved and shown in his extremely interesting " Sea-side 

 Studies," lately published. 



The EoUs must, therefore, be removed from the order 

 of nudibranchiates, or animals with naked lungs ; and 

 Mr. Lewes proposes to construct a new order for it, to 

 be called Abranchiate. The pretty little Eolith will live 



