A FEW SEA-WORMS. 269 






































“There lies an animal as foul and-monstrous to the eye as 
‘hydra, gorgon, or chimera 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 Plana- 
rian 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 seem- 
ingly endless-expansion: 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 neighboring 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 sea-weed, Himan- 
thalia lorea perhaps, or Chorda filum; or even a tarre 
String. So thinks the little fish who plays over and over 
= 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 
- Tnvent; 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 sea-weed, with a tiring drag such as no 
 Aighland wrist or step could ever bring to bear on salmon 
ella 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 
Ps expand, and slowly and surely the curved finger begins 
