94 nature's teachings. 



dire,' and yet so wondrously fitted to its work that we must 

 needs endure for our own instruction to handle and to look at 

 it. Its name I know not (though it lurks here under every 

 stone), and should be glad to know. It seems some very ' low ' 

 Ascarid or Planarian worm. 



" You see it ? That black, shiny, knotted lump among the 

 gravel, small enough to be taken up in a dessert spoon. Look 

 now, as it is raised and its coils drawn out. Three feet, six, 

 nine at least ; with a capability of seemingly endless expan- 

 sion ; a slimy tape of living caoutchouc, some eighth of an inch 

 in diameter, a dark chocolate black, with paler longitudinal 

 lines. 



"Is it alive ? It hangs helpless and motionless, a mere 

 velvet string, across the hand. Ask the neighbouring Annelids 

 and the fry of the rock-fishes, or put it into a vase at home, 

 and see. It lies motionless, trailing itself among the gravel ; 

 you cannot tell where it begins or ends ; it may be a dead strip 

 of seaweed, Himanthalia lorea, perhaps, or Chorda filum, or even 

 a tarred string. 



" So thinks the little fish who plays over and over it, till he 

 touches at last what is too surely a head. In an instant a bell- 

 shaped sucker mouth has fastened to his side. In another 

 instant, from one lip, a concave double proboscis, just like a 

 tapir's (another instance of the repetition of forms), has clasped 

 him like a finger ; and now begins the struggle : but in vain. 

 He is being ' played ' with such a fishing-line as the skill of 

 a Wilson or a Stoddart never could invent ; a living line, with 

 elasticity beyond that of the most delicate fly-rod, which 

 follows every lunge, shortening and lengthening, slipping and 

 twining round every piece of gravel and stem of seaweed, with 

 a tiring drag such as no Highland wrist or step could ever 

 bring to bear on salmon or on trout. 



" The victim is tired now ; and slowly, and yet dexterously, 

 his blind assailant is feeling and shifting along his side, till he 

 reaches one end of him ; and then the black lips expand, and 

 slowly and surely the curved finger begins packing him end 

 foremost down into the gullet, where he sinks, inch by inch, 

 till the swelling which marks his place is lost among the coils, 

 and he is probably macerated to a pulp long before he has 

 reached the opposite extremity of his cave of doom. 



