
Tee ep R Le eee eee ae eres 
CS ee al el OO EON a a hod oR re 

A FEW SEA-WORMS. 271 
While looking over the results of an hour’s search among 
the Laminaria or Devil’s Aprons, we noticed among the 
roots what was apparently a drop of blood. Placing it in a 
saucer, it soon moved and slowly stretched out a few feelers 
of unequal length, fastened the bulging ends in front of it, 
and thus anchored by the sucker-like swollen ends of the 
tentacles, drew itself along, slowly travelling Fig. 2. 
around its prison. Our figure (2) represents 
it twice its natural size. The head and tenta- 
cles are of a paler red than the rest of the 
hody, along each side of which is a row of 
short bristles, which aid it in moving in and 
out of its little rudely constructed tube of 
particles of sand, for we soon found, that, like the Terebella, 
it buried itself in the sand, leaving only the feelers exposed. 
Many worms dwell in tubes,.where their soft bodies are 
Protected from prowling crabs and flesh-eating snails. Such 
are the Serpulas, which secrete a limestone shell fitting to 
the body, and usually curved like a ram’s horn, while the 
tube of the Sabella, a beautiful worm, is leathery, or some- 
times horny. An example of the latter is the case of a 
Spiochetopterus (if the reader will excuse the length of the 
name, no fault of the worm however), fragments of which 
we have dredged at a great depth, over fifty fathoms, in a 
P fiord on the coast of Labrador, and which has been 
found on the coast of Norway by Professor M. Sars, over a 
foot in length and not a tenth of an inch in diameter. The 
phitrite cirrata (Fig. 3) is a curious tube-dweller. We 
ye dredged it abundantly in the harbor of Eastport, Maine, 
that spot favored by fogs, cold storms, and icy sea-currents, 
Where the temperature of the land and sea so nearly agree 
am low spring-tides reveal a wealth of life which in less- 
“vored spots are hid far below low-water mark, and can be 
ached only by that uncertain means, the dredge. 
figure, copied from Malmgren’s (a Swedish naturalist) 
“eeent work on the worms of the Polar sea, relieves us from 

