58 LIFE AND HER CHILDREN. 
bably few have ever thought that this is often the 
remains of the home of a lasso -thrower, any more 
than they would connect the tube-like branches on 
the seaweed with a living animal. 
Try for one moment to picture to yourself some 
quiet spot in the ocean-bed, where the whole floor is 
carpeted with- such forms, and every shell and sea- 
weed carries some hundreds of tiny beings all 
stretching out their waving tentacles and flinging out 
their miniature lassos to strike their prey. You would 
see here and there among them tall, graceful, animal 
trees, such as the sea-fir/* which often grows up into 
a brown upright tree more than three feet high, with 
branches bearing as many as a hundred thousand 
cups, each with its pure white polypite stretching out, 
and looking wonderfully delicate against the dark 
stem ; while side by side with it may be standing 
the tube-hydra,f which has single yellow pipes, 
out of each of which a brilliant scarlet creature is 
waving its graceful tentacles. All this life is active 
and busy, and yet it is all made up of beings so 
insignificant to us that we have hardly any idea of 
their existence. 
And while you were watching these thousands ol 
tiny arms you might perhaps witness a strange sight 
if your eyes were sharp enough to see it. From 
an animal tree very like the sertularia (i, Fig. 22), 
except that its horny cups are borne upon stalks, 
you might see escaping some little beings looking 
like green shining bubbles, and these, if seen under 
the microscope, turn out to be the most beautiful 
fairy jelly-bells (3', Fig. 22), like pure crystal domes 
* Sertularia cupressina. t Tubularia indivisa. 
