Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/282

Rh variety of phase, and often by the uncouthness of form, under which some of the meaner creatures are presented to us. And this is very specially the case with the inhabitants of the sea. We can scarcely poke and pry for an hour among the rocks at low-water mark, or walk with an observant downcast eye along the beach after a gale, without finding some oddly-fashioned, suspicious-looking being, unlike any form of life that we have seen before. The dark, concealed interior of the sea becomes thus invested with a fresh mystery; its vast recesses appear to be stored with all imaginable forms, and we are tempted to think there must be multitudes of living creatures whose very figure and structure have never yet been suspected.

Yet so full and close has been the attention with which the naturalists of the last hundred years have studied the forms and affinities of organic existence, that all these strange beings find their place in the arranged systems of Nature; and it is rare indeed to discover an animal or plant so diverse from those already familiar to us, that we are compelled to isolate it, or even to express uncertainty as to its general relations.

Among the treasures sent me by Mr. Kingsley was a specimen of the Rough Syrinx (Syrinx nudus), called by Pennant the Tube Worm. I presume it must be an unusually fine one of its kind, for, though it was my first acquaintance with the strange creature, and I therefore have no data for comparison derived