160 COLLECTING OBJECTS TO 



and, after carefully washing off the mud, we can take 

 home a stone which, when it is placed in our Aquarium, 



we shall find to bear, perhaps, a dozen small but bril- 

 liant orau^c-colored anemones. 



If we examine the tangled fucus that hangs in such 

 profusion from every stone, we shall find it bears im- 

 mense quantities of small branches, which are the dwell- 

 ing places of a minute zoophyte that expands a circle of 

 tentacles like an anemone, but perfectly transparent. It 

 belongs to a family called Sertularia, and will well repay 

 investigation. Within a radius of six feet around us, there 

 are, probably, millions of these little creatures. And yet, 

 each of these is covered with hundreds of minute plants 

 of the order of Diatomacea. A good example of the 

 multiplicity of animal and vegetable existence in the 

 ocean. 



"We shall, in all probability, find upon this shore, speci- 

 mens of the pretty little " Corkscrew Coralline," as it called 

 but it is another zoophyte, and, therefore, not a coralline, as 

 that name is now restricted to an order of marine plants. 

 This little creature, or rather colony of creatures, looks 

 like a tree in which the branches are arranged in a spiral 

 form around the trunk, and Mr. Lewes speaks of it as fol- 

 lows : " The stem is twisted into a corkscrew shape, suffi- 

 ciently remarkable to attract attention in rock-pools or in 

 tanks. On examining it attentively, it is generally seen 

 to be furnished with a number of processes resembling 

 vulture-heads — one beneath each cup — having two mandi- 

 bles, one fixed, the other movable by means of two sets 

 of muscular fibres, visible within the head ; and these 



