THE SEA-CUCUMBERS. 99 
curious box or to think of the history of its dying 
architect ! 
And now, what has been happening all this time 
to t.he small worm-like creature No. 5, which we left 
hidden in the rocks ? You will have to search well 
in the crevice of some dripping cavern only lately 
deserted by the tide, and there you may perchance 
find him bathing himself in a rocky pool, a large 
soft satiny sausage, purple, white, or brown, with five 
delicate stripes down his body (see Frontispiece), and 
a wreath of beautiful purple tentacles like fine sea- 
weed waving round his mouth. What connection can 
this worm-like creature have with the rayed animals ? 
Wait awhile and look more closely. Sluggish 
though he is, the Sea-cucumber does care to move 
sometimes, if only to fill his body with sand, and so 
get the particles of living matter which form his sole 
food. As he begins to glide along, see, from the 
five stripes running along his body there appear a 
number of tiny tubes with suckers (sec Frontispiece),"'' 
by which he draws himself along. Here then are 
again our five rays of tube-feet, but this time not 
forming a star, or gathered into a ball, but stretched 
out along a soft fleshy tube. 
It would seem almost as if here life had neglected 
to arm the poor soft Sea -cucumber, or, tired of 
inventing prickly defences, had fallen back again 
upon a soft jelly-animal. But the creature is not so 
helpless as he appears, for in his thick transparent 
skin are strong muscles by which he can draw his 
In some of the sea-cucumbers the rows of feet are all drawn 
together on the under side of the body, and this is the case in the form 
which the artist has represented on p. 82. 
