Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/307

252 object; and the elaborate construction of their jointed blades seems contrived for some use more delicate than that of a shoving-pole. Perhaps my readers may expect that I have some suggestion to make, but I am sorry to say I have not. I have not been able to discover any function that these elegant and exquisite implements possess in addition to those just mentioned, though I have little doubt that such function is to be discovered. It is a common phenomenon for the same organ to have two or more distinct and separate uses. The human tongue and palate play an important part in tasting food and preparing it for swallowing, and also in the utterance of speech; and in the worm before us, the beautifully-painted leaflets are organs of respiration, the blood (or rather, according to Dr. Williams, the peritoneal fluid) circulating through them in spacious radiating canals, and receiving oxygen from the currents which the marginal cilia perpetually impel across their surface; but they are also organs of locomotion; waved through the water, and half-turned when the stroke is made,—as the waterman "feathers" his oar,—it is easy to see that the animal is actually rowed along, like one of the galleys of the ancients, with a bank of three hundred oars "Natare valet lamellis suis retroversis, oblique sursum erectis,"—observes Fabricius of these elegant animals.

The following observations, whose beauty and truth necessitate no apology for their quotation, are made by one who is perhaps better qualified than any one else to express a judgment on these creatures, from the care and labour which he has bestowed on the study of them.