98 



CELTIC PROVINCE. 



their roots, and formidable Crustacea are the wild 

 beasts who prowl amid their intricacies. The old 

 stalks and the surfaces of the rocky or stony 

 ground on which they usually grow are incrusted, 

 like the trunks of ancient trees or faces of barren 

 rocks, with lichenous investments. But whereas in 

 the air these living crusts are chiefly, if not all, of 

 vegetable origin, in the sea they are more often 

 constructed out of animal organisms. Some of them 

 are sponges, compound animals of the very lowest 

 types; others are true zoophytes, polypes of simple 

 structure, but often combined in complicated com- 

 munities ; others — perhaps a majority — resemble 

 true corallines in general aspect, but differ impor- 

 tantly in essential nature, being Polyzoa or Bryozoa, 

 beings that have proved to belong to the class of 

 mollusca, however unlike they may seem to shell- 

 fish. A Flustra, for example, is really a common- 

 wealth of shell-fish, exceedingly minute, but each 

 citizen, if we would compare it with the animal 

 to which it has most affinity, is an inferior kind 

 of Terebratula, or Crania. Each community is the 

 result of the budding of some one individual, and 

 wonderful indeed is it to contemplate the exquisite 

 and defined beauty of each separate being, and the 

 equally wonderful and regular conformation of the 

 entire assemblage composing a single mass. 



In the middle and lower part of the Laminarian 

 region around our shores, the tangles become less 

 plentiful as we descend, and at last become excep- 



