Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/285

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A rich fund of entertainment is very accessible to any one who can procure a few bits of weed-covered rock from the level of low-water. They need scarcely be selected: with a hammer knock off a few points of the stones, of the size of a crown-piece; the rougher, more leprous, more discoloured, in short, more dirty the better. Put them into a globe of sea-water, an uncut decanter, or a wide-mouthed bottle, or, best of all, a confectioner's show-glass, and let them remain for a few hours. At night examine the sides of the bottle carefully with a pocket-lens, placing a candle on the opposite side. The multitude of curious little creatures that will have crawled out, and will be found mounting the walls of their prison, is quite surprising. Minute Mollusca, both bivalve and univalve, uncouth-formed Crustacea, tiny Starfishes, and especially Annelida, will pretty certainly reward the investigator. The last-named Class occurs in remarkable abundance and variety; while if, after you have gone round the glass, noticing particularly the very edge of the surface-line, you pass your eye, assisted by the lens, carefully over the surfaces of the bits of stone, you will probably find many more creatures, such as tube-dwelling Annelides, the smaller Zoophytes, and several species of the delicate Bryozoa.

In a lot of sea-weeds sent up to me from the coast, enclosed in refuse-weed and tightly packed in a piece of canvas, I found among many such little things as I have described, a small Terebella, which interested me by a habit that I should not have suspected in the