278 
THE OCEAN WORLD. 
Were a traveller to tell us that he had seen animals drop their egg 9 
upon forests of stone; that these eggs, after executing their pro' 
gressive evolutions, finally become individuals in all respects like then 
parents, which attach themselves to the soil by a root like any flower 
of the fields, or to the mother-stem like the branch of a tree, until W 
due course they attained the adult state, when the flexible band which 
holds them fixed either to the soil or parent-stem breaks, and the 
Fis?. 103. Comtitulii MoHlitcmincfl (Lamarck), natural size. 
animal, now free, launches itself into the liquid medium, and goes 1° 
live a proper and independent existence ; — in listening to a recital 90 
opposed in appearance to the ordinary laws of Nature, we should b e 
inclined to tax the narrator ol such incredible facts with error or folly* 
Nevertheless all these facts are now perfectly established. The loexog 
which presents these marvels has nothing of the fabulous about it. ^ 
is the Comatula Mediterrcmea ; it lives at the bottom of the sea, the 
surface of which is incessantly tracked by our vessels. 
