THE MANTLE -COVERED ANIMALS. 
103 
CHAPTER VI. 
THE MANTLE-COVERED ANIMALS, AND HOW THEY 
LIVE WITH HEADS AND WITHOUT THEM.* 
See what a lovely shell, 
Small and pure as a pearl, 
Lying close to my foot, 
Frail, but a work divine, 
Made so fairily well, 
With delicate spire and whorl, 
How exquisitely minute, 
A miracle of design. 
The tiny cell is forlorn, 
Void of the little living will 
That made it stir on the shore ; 
Did he stand at the diamond door 
Of his house in a rainbow frill ? 
Did he push when he was uncurled, 
A golden foot or a fairy horn, 
Thro' his dim water-world ? 
Tennyson. 
^F all our many playthings 
when we were children, were 
there any we loved better or 
cherished longer than the shells 
which we brought home from the 
seaside, and each of which w r e knew, 
not perhaps by name, but as a shep- 
herd knows his sheep, so that no 
single one could be missing without 
our detecting it ? 
They may have been only com- 
mon shells, such as the small pink- 
tinted scallops, variegated top-shells, 
small cowries, or spiral turrets, with 
here and there a delicate razor-shell, treasured espe- 
* The sea-mats [Polyzoa]^ sea-squirts (Asci(iians) t and lampshella 
