STAK-FISHES. 
115 
larva, which has acted as a nidus for it, but throws it off 
as so much useless lumber — flesh, rods, and all ! 
Thus does Science continually say to us, startled by 
discovery after discovery, each more strange than its pre- 
decessor — 
“ There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamed of in your philosophy/’ 
In Plate IV., some of the forms of Echinodermata are 
represented. In the right-band corner is the Rosette 
Brittle-star ( Ophiocoma rosula), sprawling its snake-like 
arms over a rock. Beside this, on the left, the globose 
crustaceous case of the Common Urchin ( Echinus sphoera), 
denuded of its spines, displays the arrangement of its con- 
stituent plates, and the form of the tubercles. Above, a 
Purple-tipped Urchin (E. miliaria) is mounting the per- 
pendicular rock by means of its numerous sucker-feet ; 
and on the right of this, swimming freely through the 
water, is seen the singular pellucid larva of a Brittle-star. 
The reader must be pleased, however, to understand that, 
whereas all the other objects are depicted of thoir natural 
size, this is greatly magnified ; a violence to nature indis- 
pensable to its representation at all, since it is really no 
larger than the hole which would be made by a fine needle 
in a piece of paper, or the period which terminates this 
paragraph. 
