MACKIE~ON THE BOTTOM-ROCKS. 



187 



abraded before they were covered up and entombed ; the sun-crack 

 shows the drying influences of the wind and sun ; while in the hollow 



Lign. 2.— Sea-Ripples. The arrow indicates the direction of the wind. 



spaces where the moisture was retained, the worms perforated by 

 scores the damp earth. 



" We may live," says Mr. Binney, " among the grandest scenes of 

 nature, or may visit the noblest monuments of art, and remain in- 

 sensible to their beauty or sublimity. Differently affected, we may 

 find in the barren sands of the sea-shore enjoyment of the purest 

 character, and speculations which, rising from nothing more important 

 than the trail of a sea-slug, will lead us to contemplate, and in some 

 measure to comprehend, some of the most extensive operations of 

 nature, and bring under review unnumbered ages, past, present, and 

 to come." 



The Arenicolse construct no tubes on the surface of marine objects, 

 they have no protecting cases nor shells, no solid skeletons, but their 

 soft, ring-formed bodies, supporting on each segment tufts of bristle- 

 feet, and feathery, vein-like, external lungs, lie buried in the sand, and 

 there, by means of their terminal retractile proboscis, unarmed by 

 teeth, these sightless beings suck in the watery sand, or ooze, and 

 obtain their nutriment in the organic particles it contains. Dying, 

 they leave nought but their burrows and their trails ; of themselves, 

 nothing. 



These old fossil worm-holes of the Longmynds are much smaller 

 than the recent ones of the common Arenicola piscatorum ; and in all 

 cases that I have seen, there is in them an absence of those coils of 

 sands at the vent-ends of the burrows, and of the conical cavities at 

 the other extremities, which, everywhere on our sea-sands and shores, 

 mark the existence below of the innumerable thousands of the fisher- 



