THE SEA-CUCUMBERS. 101 
And now we have followed our five little jelly- 
bodies out into life, and have found that they have 
as much a real history as you or I have, with real 
struggles and difficulties which they can only over- 
come by using all their powers. The varieties of 
these five forms are far too many for us even to 
glance at them. There are the fixed stone-lilies of 
the deep sea, which do not become free like the 
feather-star. There are brittle-stars, from a tiny star 
with a disc as small as a pin's head, and arms like 
fine threads, to others measuring a foot and a half 
across. There are star-fish large and small, some 
like stars, others like five-sided plates, others with the 
rays turned back like a folded dinner-napkin. There 
are sea-urchins round, egg-shaped, wheel-shaped, and 
flattened, and from the size of a pea to that of a child's 
head ; while there are others from warm seas, with 
three- edged spines as thick as a little finger, and 
twice as long. A visit to any good museum * will 
show these varying forms, and though the sea-cucum- 
bers will not be so well represented, because they 
are soft animals, yet you will find the Trepangs of the 
Chinese, with their black leathery coats, and others 
which are covered with plates of lime. The beauti- 
ful Synapta, which lives in our English Channel, with 
its lovely rose-coloured tube, and its anchor-bearing 
shields, you will not so easily find, for it is so brittle 
that it is very difficult to preserve. This lovely 
creature, often a foot and a half long, shelters itself 
by a tube of sand built in rings by its tentacles, and 
passed down over its body by the microscopic anchors 
buried in its soft flesh, and by these anchors it also 
* The British Museum has a very fine collection. 
