Marvels of the Universe 



153 



The animal which builds this tube, and of which we have only seen a small portion, has a long 

 body built up of a series of rings, and around each ring there is a circlet of bristles, by whose aid it 

 climbs up and down its tube. In building this tower it employs a cement of its own production, 

 which hardens into a kind of silk to which fine particles of sand or mud adhere, and the whole sets 

 into a firm tube. Some species build sohtary tubes ; others combine in colonies of scores or hundreds 

 of individuals each in its own tube. 



THE PORTUGUESE MAN-O'-WAR 



BY FR.^XK T. BULLEN, F.R.G.S. 



That verj' delicate and beautiful denizen of the deep seas which is known to seamen by the above 

 slightlj' sarcastic title is eminently worthy of a little detailed attention, perhaps all the worthier 

 because in a Universe of Marvels its value is purely decorative, having not the least commercial 

 use. 



In some one or other of its hundred or so varieties it abounds in every tropical sea, exhibiting 

 the dehcate sapphire tints of its " sail " and the lovely shades of colour in its " oars " only when the 

 ocean is sufficiently placid to allow so tender an argonaut to venture upon the surface. Then 

 on some quiet evening, when the westward-hastening sun has flung along the level circle a succession 

 of colour schemes each more wonderful than the last, a pigmy fleet of these timid voyagers may be 



PfMOi hy\ lllii.jh Main, F.E.fi. 



THE SABELLA AND ITS HOUSE. 



The Sabella 19 one of the marine worms that protect themselves from their enemies by building a tube-shaped house of 

 silk and mud or sand. In the first photo its closed gills are just protuding ; in the second they are spreading out. 



