Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/287

232 species, like orange-coloured animated threads, may be seen twining in all directions over the exposed soil. If you carefully look at the larger end of the tube, you will observe that it is irregularly fringed with threads of exactly the same texture as the tube itself; they are in fact minute tubes of the same shelly mosaic, though no thicker than stout sewing cotton, and most admirably constructed to sheath the tentacles as they project from the main tube, and expand on every side.

But it was not as a builder that I was going to introduce to you my little Terebella, which the candle revealed in the vase of sea-weeds, when I examined them the evening after their arrival. It was a little creature, not quite an inch long in the body, and with tentacles expanding about as much. Whether, finding itself in new quarters, it had left its dwelling to explore the neighbourhood, I know not,—possibly by careful search I might have found the emptied tube among the bases of the tufted weeds, or adhering to some of the pieces of stone on which they were growing;—but the naked worm was deliberately mounting the smooth side of the tall glass vessel. The body hung down, and the tentacles, some fifty or sixty in number, were spread out on each side and above, on the surface of the glass, adhering to it evidently, and alternately elongated and contracted, with an impatient writhing, twisting action, the result of which was to crawl, not very slowly either, up the glass.

After a time, I went into the room again, and found the Terebella in another situation, and performing a