Thus is reversed the transformation of insects, which is first the motionless chrysalis and then the butterfly, while with the coral first comes the free-swimming larva and afterward the immovable polyp. ascending branches, tipped each with its The red and pink coral of commerce is found principally off the coasts of France and Italy, where, within the rocky recesses of the sea-bottom, grow purple forests of this most valuable of all the corals. Unlike its homologues on the land, the coral loves to grow downward from the roof of some shelv-changing their locality, are the soft-bodied ing rock or marine cave. Among the curious coral formations few are more interesting than the "musical coral," or "sea-organ," so called because of the great number of stony pipes, most usually straight and slightly radiating, a representation of which, crowned with its delicate flower polyps, is given in the lower part of the engraving on page 325, in which an attempt is made to render the texture as well as the general effect of these beautiful anthozoa. A specimen of the Dendrophyllia ramea, one of the madrepores, is also shown at the right as a very large stem with short polyps, the sea-anemones. Adhering to a rock by a fleshy disk that adapts itself to all inequalities, it spreads its tentacles like the petals of the flower from which it is named, and awaits its prey. "Its stomach is simply a sack suspended in the cavity of its body, into which it opens at the lower extremity by a large aperture. Between the stomach and the body walls are spaces opening into the numerous hollow tentacles, which by muscular contraction are filled out into their proper shape and size with seawater." Like the coral polyps, the anemone, while retaining animal instincts and perception, subject to change of color, being evidently repeats many of the processes of vegetable influenced by various external conditions, life. If a part is destroyed or damaged, it such as light, food, and the purity of water is reproduced. If an individual is torn in in which it is placed." The gem pimplet, pieces, each fragment becomes a perfect ani- | Bunades gemmacea, a very showy species, is mal. At times buds appear at the edge of seen placed lowest in the illustration. Its the base. These buds in time become em- thick tentacles are marked with white oval bryos, which, detached from the parent spots, and there are six white bands on the stem, grow into perfect anemones. Another body. It is remarkable for the resemblance mode of reproduction is equally curious. In it bears, when closed, as seen in the darker this case the eggs are formed inside of the object at the right of the illustration, to an arms or tentacles, discharged from thence, echinus, or sea-urchin, stripped of its spines. when hatched, into the stomach, and ejected from the mouth. These beautiful animated flowers of the sea are of every shade and hue: white, with a pearly translucency like the petals of a lily, gray, pink like a baby's fingers, red (appropriately named "blood stars"), purple, with a plum-like bloom, fawn, golden yellow, orange, lilac, azure, and green. "One beautiful species has violet tentacles pointed with white; another, red tentacles speckled with gray; this one spreads out its green arms edged with a circle of dead white, while that opens a milk-white top circled with a border of pink. Nor," says M. Moquin Taudon, in Le Monde de la Mer, from which we quote, "are the stem, the disk, and the tentacles invariably of the same color; and it is because of this these living corollas possess such a variety of hues. Behold an anemone with a golden body, a disk of a plum-color, surrounded by tentacles of white; a second has a red centre, with tentacles of gray; in a third the centre is green and the tentacles yellow. So Nature diversifies her countless creations, and upon the same theme plays endless variations." The anemone just beneath the shrimp in the illustration on page 326 is the Actinoloba dianathus, displaying its furry plume of tentacles fringed and cut like the petals of a pink. It has a variety of colors-orange, cream-color, pink, olive, red, or silvery white. It can at its own caprice assume widely different forms, and, fortunately for owners of aquaria, is very hardy. Its English name is the plumose anemone. On the left, serpent-crowned with its Medusa-like crest, is the snake-locked anemone. Though it has not the brilliant colors of the preceding species, it is a remarkably pretty anemone, with its crown of tentacles waving "like a thin blue cloud" upon the summit of its elongated stem. The object furthest to the right is the same anemone closed. That immediately beneath the snake-locked anemone is called the beadlet, because of the deep blue turquois-like protuberances placed around the disk: Actinia menembryanthemum. "It is extremely variable in color, ranging through all the changes from scarlet to crimson, from crimson to orange, from orange to yellow, from yellow to green. Even the same individual,” says J. G. Wood, "is In the same great class as the anemones, but higher in the order of creation, is one of the most exquisitely beautiful of marine objects, the celebrated argonaut, or paper nautilus, so called because of the extreme thinness of the shell, its former name being given it in allusion to its fabled sailing powers, in relation to which that Darwin of the ancients, Aristotle, says: "The nautilus polyp is of the nature of animals which pass for extraordinary, for it can float on the sea; it raises itself from the bottom of the water, the shell being reversed and empty, but when it reaches the surface it re-adjusts it. It has between the arms a species of tissue similar to that which unites the toes of webfooted birds; when there is a little wind, it employs this tissue as a sort of sail." Indeed, until a comparatively recent period, all accounts of the animal represented it as using its delicate shell for a boat, its tentacles as oars, and its expanded mantle as a sail. The truth, however, is strange enough, without having recourse to fiction. One of the most extraordinary circumstances connected with the animal is the fact that it is not united to the shell it secretes, and can be entirely separated from it, as if one should evolve a boat or a house from his own substance, which would grow with his growth, and heal when injured, and yet which he could quit and leave behind him when he chose. The dilated extremities of two of the arms, as seen in the cut (page 328), cover up the shell on the exterior, and have secreted its substance, and by their broad expansion moulded it into shape; they clasp the shell firmly, and serve to retain the animal within it. The figure lowest in the illustration represents the nautilus withdrawn within its shell. The large expanded membranes at the extremities of the arms cover the greater part of the shell, while their supports, set with suckers resembling those of the cuttle-fish, are bent over the remainder of the animal. The large eye is seen peeping with a wide-awake expression over the edge of the shell, the bases of the arms are arched over and beyond it, and clusters of eggs are seen sheltered under the arch of the expanded arms. When the nautilus is taking a leisurely stroll, she walks upon her head. I say "she," for it is only the females which se- | sometimes taking a strong hold with her crete shells, the males being very insig-cup-like suckers on some projecting rock, nificant, worm-like creatures. Withdraw- and swinging herself from one projection to ing her body as far as possible into her another. At other times, desiring a swifter shell, madame turns herself in such a man-mode of progression, she assumes the apner as to rest upon her head, and, using her pearance and attitude shown in the midarms to walk upon, creeps slowly along, dle figure, extends her six arms in parallel "It ap of this dainty creature. peared," writes Mr. Rang, describing one of these polyps which had been captured alive," a mass of silver, with a cloud of spots of a most beautiful rose-color, and a fine dotting of the same, which heightened its beauty. A long semicircular band of ultramarine blue, which melted away insensibly, was very decidedly marked at one of its extremities: that is the keel." Thus it appears more like a fairy in a boat of unearthly and enchanting beauty as it floats upon a summer sea than the which its preserved corpse ex There are none of our readers, we venture to say, who have not admired the gorgeous richness or the tender delicacy of the colors, and the strange eccentricity or exquisite grace of the forms of sea-shells. All elegant curves, all gradations of spirals, all manner of spines and protuberances, all varieties of radiating lines, seem exhausted in their formation. What can surpass the shell called Venus's comb, seen in the centre of the upper part of the engraving on page 329, in the Japanese-like combination of elegance and grotesqueness in its formation? It may be said that the law of its being is that every part should develop into thorns or spines. Every part of its surface not occupied by spines is covered with tubercles, which are nothing else than spines in a state of arrested development, and even the markings in its mouth take the form of spines. On the left of the illustration, with its projecting beak crossing that of the last-named shell, is a species of the same genus. In this shell another law of development obtains, decreeing that knobs or rounded nodules shall take the place of spines, and certainly a more tuberculated object it would be hard to imagine. On the lower part of the illustration that extends along the left side of the page is the spindle shell, carrying its spire into the upper half of the illustration. The shell is pearly white, and ornamented with the most delicate imaginable spiral VIRGULARIA. |