IN FEATHERS AND FUR. 
315 
A LIVE BAG. 
Dear me, who would ever think this curious looking object 
was alive, and could eat, and was in fact an animal ! It has no head, 
no arms, no legs, but it has a stomach (in truth it is nearly all 
stomach), a mouth, nerves, a heart, and very small eyes. They are 
called TunicateSy because they have no shell, but a sort of elastic 
tunic. Some of them are transparent, and really beautiful ; but 
others are scarcely more than a shapeless mass. 
The one in the picture is one of the Simple or Solitary Tuni- 
cates ; called so because it attaches itself to a rock, each individual 
for himself, and never moves from that spot. There he sits the 
whole of his life, drawing in the sea water at one of those curious 
openings you see on him, and pouring it out at the other, after 
taking from it all that he wants to eat. Thus he keeps up a con- 
stant current of water, and so the bag is always full. This creature, 
too, is usually covered with a growth of sea weeds, and half 
covered with sand and stones, so that he can't be said to be very 
interesting to look at. But some of his family are gaily colored 
with orange, crimson and white, and attain to quite a large size (for 
Tunicates) being five or six inches long. 
