close to it. Those yellow plants which I likened to squirrels’ tails
and lobsters’ horns, and what not, are zoophytes of different kinds.
Here is Sertularia argentea (true squirrel’s tail); here S. filicula,
as delicate as tangled threads of glass; here abietina; here rosacea.
The lobsters’ horns are Antennaria antennina; and mingled with them
are Plumulariæ, always to be distinguished from Sertulariæ by polypes
growing on one side of the branch, and not on both. Here is falcata,
with its roots twisted round a sea-weed. Here is cristata, on the
same weed; and here is a piece of the beautiful myriophyllum, which
has been battered in its long journey out of the deep water about the
ore rock. Here are Flustræ, or sea-mats. This, which smells very like
Verbena, is Flustra coriacea. That scurf on the frond of ore-weed
is F. lineata. The glass bells twined about this Sertularia are
Campanularia syringa; and here is a tiny plant of Cellularia ciliata.
Look at it through the field-glass; for it is truly wonderful. Each
polype cell is edged with whip-like spines, and on the back of some
of them is--what is it but a live vulture’s head, snapping and
snapping--what for?
Next, what are the striped pears? They are sea-anemones, Sagartia
viduata, the snake-locked anemone. They have been washed off the
loose stones to which they usually adhere by the pitiless roll of
the ground-swell; however, they are not so far gone but that if you
take one of them home and put it in a jar of water, it will expand
into a delicate compound flower, which can neither be described nor
painted, of long pellucid tentacles, hanging like a thin, bluish
cloud over a disk of mottled brown and gray. Here, adhering to this
large whelk, is another, but far larger and coarser. It is Sagartia
parasitica, one of our largest British species; and most singular in
this, that it is almost always (in Torbay at least) found adhering
to a whelk: but never to a live one; and for this reason. The live
whelk (as you may see for yourself when the tide is out) burrows
in the sand in chase of hapless bivalve shells, which he bores
through with his sharp tongue (always, cunning fellow, close to
the hinge where the fish is), and then sucks out their life. Now,
if the anemone stuck to him, it would be carried under the sand
daily, to its own disgust. It prefers, therefore, the dead whelk,
inhabited by a soldier crab, Pagurus Bernhardi, of which you may
find a dozen anywhere as the tide goes out; and travels about at the
crab’s expense, sharing with him the offal which is his food. Note,
moreover, that the soldier crab is the most hasty and blundering of
marine animals, as active as a monkey, and as subject to panics as a
horse; wherefore the poor anemone on his back must have a hard life
of it; being knocked about against rocks and shells, without warning,
from morn to night and night to morn. Against which danger, kind
Nature, ever _maximus in minimis_, has provided by fitting him with
a stout leather coat, which she has given, I believe, to no other of
his family.
Next for the babies’ heads, covered with prickles instead of hair.
They are sea urchins, Amphidotus cordatus, which burrow by thousands
in the sand. They are of that Spatangoid form which you will often
find fossil in the chalk, and which shepherd boys call snakes’ heads.
We shall soon find another sort, an Echinus, and have time to talk
over these most strange (in my eyes) of all living animals.
I must mention Synapta; or, as Montague called it, Chirodota--a much
better name, and, I think, very uselessly changed; for Chirodota
expresses the peculiarity of the beast, which consists in--start
not, reader--twelve hands, like human hands, while Synapta expresses
merely its power of clinging to the fingers, which it possesses
in common with many other animals. It is, at least, a beast worth
talking about; as for finding one, I fear that we have no chance of
such good fortune.
But what is it like? Conceive a very fat, short earth-worm; not
ringed, though, like the earth-worm, but smooth and glossy, dappled
with darker spots, especially on one side, which may be the upper
one. Put round its mouth twelve little arms, on each a hand with four
ragged fingers, and on the back of the hand a stump of a thumb, and
you have Synapta Digitata. These hands it puts down to its mouth,
generally in alternate pairs, but how it obtains its food by them is
yet a mystery, for its intestines are filled, like an earth-worm’s,
with the mud in which it lives, and from which it probably extracts
(as does the earth-worm) all organic matters.
You will find it stick to your fingers by the whole skin, causing, if
your hand be delicate, a tingling sensation; and if you will examine
the skin under the microscope, you will find the cause. The whole
skin is studded with minute glass anchors, some hanging freely from
the surface, but most imbedded in the skin. Each of these anchors is
joined at its root into one end of a curious cribriform plate--in
plain English one pierced like a sieve, which lies under the skin and
reminds one of the similar plates in the skin of the White Cucumaria,
which I will show you presently; and both of these we must regard as
the first rudiments of an Echinoderm’s outside skeleton, such as in
the sea-urchins covers the whole body of the animal. The animal, when
caught, has a strange habit of self-destruction, contracting its skin
at two or three different points, and writhing till it snaps itself
into “junks,” as the sailors would say, and then dies.
Every ledge of these flat New Red Sandstone rocks, if torn up with
the crowbar, discloses in its cracks and crannies nests of strange
forms which shun the light of day; beautiful Actiniæ fill the tiny
caverns with living flowers; great Pholades bore by hundreds in the
softer strata; and wherever a thin layer of muddy sand intervenes
between two slabs, long Annelid worms of quaintest forms and colors
have their horizontal burrows, among those of that curious and rare
radiate animal, the Spoonworm, an eyeless bag about an inch long,
half bluish gray, half pink, with a strange scalloped and wrinkled
proboscis of saffron color, which serves in some mysterious way,
soft as it is, to collect food and clear its dark passage through
the rock. See, at the extreme low-water mark, where the broad olive
fronds of the Laminariæ, like fan-palms, droop and wave gracefully
in the retiring ripples, a great bowlder which will serve our
purpose. Its upper side is a whole forest of sea-weeds, large and
small; and that forest, if you examined it closely, as full of
inhabitants as those of the Amazon or the Gambia. To “beat” that
dense cover would be an endless task; but on the under side, where no
sea-weeds grow, we shall find full in view enough to occupy us till
the tide returns.
Now the crowbar is well under it; heave, and with a will; and so,
after five minutes’ tugging, propping, slipping, and splashing, the
bowlder gradually tips over, and we rush greedily upon the spoil.
The first object which strikes the eye is probably a group of
milk-white slugs, from two to six inches long, cuddling snugly
together. You try to pull them off, and find that they give you some
trouble, such a firm hold have the delicate white sucking arms,
which fringe each of their five edges. You see at the head nothing
but a yellow dimple; for eating and breathing are suspended till the
return of tide; but once settled in a jar of salt water, each will
protrude a large chocolate-colored head, tipped with a ring of ten
feathery gills, looking very much like a head of “curled kale,” but
of the loveliest white and primrose; in the centre whereof lies perdu
a mouth with sturdy teeth--if, indeed, they, as well as the whole
inside of the beast, have not been lately got rid of, and what you
see be not a mere bag, without intestine or other organ: but only
for the time being. For hear it, worn-out epicures and old Indians
who bemoan your livers, this little Holothuria knows a secret which,
if he could tell it, you would be glad to buy of him for thousands
sterling. To him blue pill and muriatic acid are superfluous and
travels to Brunnen a waste of time. Happy Holothuria! who possesses
really the secret of everlasting youth, which ancient fable bestowed
on the serpent and the eagle. For when his teeth ache, or his
digestive organs trouble him, all he has to do is just to cast up
forthwith his entire inside, and _faisant maigre_ for a month or so,
grow a fresh set, and then eat away as merrily as ever. His name, if
you wish to consult so triumphant a hygeist, is Cucumaria Pentactes.
Now what are those bright little buds, like salmon-colored Banksia
roses half-expanded, sitting closely on the stone? Touch them; the
soft part is retracted, and the orange flower of flesh transformed
into a pale pink flower of stone. That is the Madrepore (Caryophyllia
Smithii); one of our south coast varieties: and see, on the lip of
the last one, which we have carefully scooped off with the chisel,
two little pink towers of stone, delicately striated; drop them into
this small bottle of sea-water, and from the top of each tower issues
every half second--what shall we call it?--a hand or a net of finest
hairs, clutching at something invisible to our grosser sense.
“Doubtless you are familiar with the stony skeleton of our Madrepore,
as it appears in museums. It consists of a number of thin calcareous
plates standing up edgewise, and arranged in a radiating manner
round a low centre.... This is but the skeleton; and though it is
a very pretty object, those who are acquainted with it alone can
form but a very poor idea of the beauty of the living animal.... Let
it, after being torn from the rock, recover its equanimity; then
you will see a pellucid gelatinous flesh emerging from between the
plates, and little exquisitely formed and colored tentacula, with
white clubbed tips fringing the sides of the cup-shaped cavity in the
centre, across which stretches the oval disk marked with a star of
some rich and brilliant color, surrounding the central mouth, a slit
with white crenated lips, like the orifice of one of those elegant
cowry shells which we put upon our mantel-pieces. The mouth is always
more or less prominent, and can be protruded and expanded to an
astonishing extent. The space surrounding the lips is commonly fawn
color, or rich chestnut-brown, the star or vandyked circle rich red,
pale vermilion, and sometimes the most brilliant emerald green, as
brilliant as the gorget of a humming-bird.”[4]
And what does this exquisitely delicate creature do with its pretty
mouth? Alas for fact! It sips no honey-dew, or fruits from paradise.
“I put a minute spider, as large as a pin’s head, into the water,
pushing it down to the coral. The instant it touched the tip of a
tentacle it adhered, and was drawn in with the surrounding tentacles
between the plates. With a lens I saw the small mouth slowly open
and move over to that side, the lips gaping unsymmetrically; while,
with a movement as imperceptible as that of the hour hand of a watch,
the tiny prey was carried along between the plates to the corner of
the mouth. The mouth, however, moved most, and at length reached
the edges of the plates, gradually closed upon the insect, and then
returned to its usual place in the centre.” (Gosse.) The fact is,
that the Madrepore, like those glorious sea-anemones whose living
flowers stud every pool, is by profession a scavenger and a feeder
on carrion; and being as useful as he is beautiful, really comes
under the rule which he seems at first to break, that handsome is who
handsome does.
Look now at these tiny saucers of the thinnest ivory, the largest not
bigger than a silver threepence, which contain in their centres a
milk-white crust of stone, pierced, as you see under the magnifier,
into a thousand cells, each with its living architect within. Here
are two kinds: in one the tabular cells radiate from the centre,
giving it the appearance of a tiny compound flower, daisy or
groundsel; in the other they are crossed with waving grooves, giving
the whole a peculiar fretted look, even more beautiful than that
of the former species. They are Tubulipora patina and Tubulipora
hispida; and stay--break off that tiny rough red wart, and look at
its cells also under the magnifier: it is Cellepora pumicosa; and
now, with the Madrepore, you hold in your hand the principal, at
least the commonest, British types of those famed coral insects which
in the tropics are the architects of continents and the conquerors of
the ocean surge.
There are a few other true cellepore corals round the coast. The
largest of all, Cervicornis, may be dredged a few miles outside on
the Exmouth bank, with a few more Tubulipores: but all tiny things,
the lingering and, as it were, expiring remnants of that great
coral-world which, through the abysmal depths of past ages, formed
here in Britain our limestone hills, storing up for generations yet
unborn the materials of agriculture and architecture. Inexpressibly
interesting, even solemn, to those who will think, is the sight of
those puny parasites which, as it were, connect the ages and the
eons: yet not so solemn and full of meaning as that tiny relic of
an older world, the little pear-shaped Turbinolia (cousin of the
Madrepores and Sea-anemones), found fossil in the Suffolk crag, and
yet still lingering here and there alive in the deep water of Scilly
and the west coast of Ireland, possessor of a pedigree which dates,
perhaps, from ages before the day in which it was said: “Let us make
man in our image, after our likeness.”
But we must make haste; for the tide is rising fast, and our stone
will be restored to its eleven hours’ bath long before we have talked
over half the wonders which it holds. Look, though, ere you retreat,
at one or two more.
What is that little brown thing whom you have just taken off the
rock to which he adhered so stoutly by his sucking-foot? A limpet?
Not at all: he is of quite a different family and structure; but
on the whole, a limpet-like shell would suit him well enough, so
he had one given him: nevertheless, owing to certain anatomical
peculiarities, he needed one aperture more than a limpet; so one,
if you will examine, has been given him at the top of his shell
(Fissurella græca). This is one instance among a thousand of the way
in which a scientific knowledge of objects must not obey, but run
counter to, the impressions of sense; and of a custom in nature which
makes this caution so necessary, namely, the repetition of the same
form, slightly modified, in totally different animals, sometimes as
if to avoid waste (for why should not the same conception be used in
two different cases, if it will suit in both?) and sometimes (more
marvelous by far) when an organ, fully developed and useful in one
species, appears in a cognate species but feeble, useless, and, as it
were, abortive; and gradually, in species still further removed, dies
out altogether; placed there it would seem at first sight merely to
keep up the family likeness. I am half jesting; that can not be the
only reason, perhaps not the reason at all; but the fact is one of
the most curious, and notorious also, in comparative anatomy.
Look, again, at those sea-slugs. One, some three inches long, of a
bright lemon-yellow, clouded with purple; another of a dingy gray
(Doris tuberculata and bilineata); another exquisite little creature
of a pearly French white, furred all over the back with what seem
arms, but are really gills, of ringed white and gray and black (Eolis
papilosa). Put that yellow one into water, and from his head, above
the eyes, arise two serrated horns, while from the after part of his
back springs a circular Prince-of-Wales’s-feather of gills--they
are exactly like those which we saw just now in the white Cucumaria.
Yes; here is another instance of the same custom of repetition. The
Cucumaria is a low radiate animal--the sea-slug a far higher mollusk;
and every organ within him is formed on a different type; as, indeed,
are those seemingly identical gills, if you come to examine them
under the microscope, having to oxygenate fluids of a very different
and complicated kind; and, moreover, the Cucumaria’s gills were put
round his mouth, the Doris’s feathers round the other extremity;
that gray Eolis’s again, are simple clubs, scattered over his whole
back, and in each of his nudibranch congeners these same gills take
some new and fantastic form; in Melibæa those clubs are covered with
warts; in Scyllæa, with tufted bouquets; in the beautiful Antiopa
they are transparent bags; and in many other English species they
take every conceivable form of leaf, tree, flower, and branch,
bedecked with every color of the rainbow, as you may see them
depicted in Messrs. Alder and Hancock’s unrivaled _Monograph on the
Nudibranch Mollusca_.
One sight more, and we have done. I had something to say, had time
permitted, on the ludicrous element which appears here and there in
nature. There are animals, like monkeys and crabs, which seem made to
be laughed at; by those at least who possess that most indefinable
of faculties, the sense of the ridiculous. But, in the meanwhile,
there are animals in which results so strange, fantastic, even
seemingly horrible, are produced, that fallen man may be pardoned
if he shrinks from them in disgust. At all events, whether we were
intruding or not, in turning this stone, we must pay a fine for
having done so; for there lies an animal as foul and monstrous to
the eye as “hydra, gorgon, or chimæra dire,” and yet so wondrously
fitted to its work that we must needs endure for our own instruction
to handle and to look at it. Its name, if you wish for it, is
Nemertes; probably N. Borlasii, a worm of very “low” organization,
though well fitted enough for its own work. You see it? That black,
shiny, knotted lump among the gravel, small enough to be taken up
in a dessert spoon. Look now, as it is raised and its coils drawn
out. Three feet--six--nine, at least: with a capability of seemingly
endless expansion; a slimy tape of living caoutchouc, some eighth of
an inch in diameter, a dark, chocolate black, with paler longitudinal
lines. Is it alive? It hangs, helpless and motionless, a mere velvet
string across the hand. Ask the neighboring Annelids and the fry of
the rock-fishes, or put it into a vase at home, and see. It lies
motionless, trailing itself among the gravel; you can not tell where
it begins or ends; it may be a dead strip of sea-weed, Himanthalia
lorea, perhaps, or Chorda filum, or even a tarred string. So thinks
the little fish who plays over and over it, till he touches at
last what is too surely a head. In an instant a bell-shaped sucker
mouth has fastened to his side. In another instant, from one lip,
a concave double proboscis, just like a tapir’s (another instance
of the repetition of forms), has clasped him like a finger; and
now begins the struggle: but in vain. He is being “played” with
such a fishing-line as the skill of a Wilson or a Stoddart never
could invent; a living line, with elasticity beyond that of the
most delicate fly rod, which follows every lunge, shortening and
lengthening, slipping and twining round every piece of gravel and
stem of sea-weed, with a tiring drag such as no Highland wrist or
step could ever bring to bear on salmon or on trout. The victim is
tired now; and slowly, and yet dexterously, his blind assailant is
feeling and shifting along his side, till he reaches one end of him;
and then the black lips expand, and slowly and surely the curved
finger begins packing him end foremost into the gullet, where he
sinks, inch by inch, till the swelling which marks his place is lost
among the coils, and he is probably mascerated to a pulp long before
he has reached the opposite extremity of his cave of doom. Once safe
down, the black murderer slowly contracts again into a knotted heap,
and lies, like a boa with a stag inside him, motionless and blessed.
There; we must come away now, for the tide is over our ankles; but
touch, before you go, one of those little red mouths which peep out
of the stone. A tiny jet of water shoots up almost into your face.
The bivalve (Saxicava rugosa), who has burrowed into the limestone
knot (the softest part of the stone to his jaws, though the hardest
to your chisel), is scandalized at having the soft mouths of his
siphons so rudely touched, and taking your finger for some bothering
Annelid, who wants to nibble him, is defending himself; shooting you,
as naturalists do humming-birds, with water. Let him rest in peace;
it will cost you ten minutes’ hard work and much dirt to extract him;
but if you are fond of shells, secure one or two of those beautiful
pink and straw-colored scallops (Hinnites pusio) who have gradually
incorporated the layers of their lower valve with the roughness
of the stone, destroying thereby the beautiful form which belongs
to their race, but not their delicate color. There are a few more
bivalves, too, adhering to the stone, and those rare ones, and two or
three delicate Mangeliæ and Nassæ are trailing their graceful spires
up and down in search of food. That little bright red and yellow
pea, too, touch it--the brilliant colored cloak is withdrawn, and,
instead, you have a beautiful ribbed pink cowry (Cypræa Europæa),
the only European representative of that grand tropical family. Cast
one wondering glance, too, at the forest of zoophytes and corals,
Lepraliæ and Flustræ, and those quaint blue stars, set in brown
jelly, which are no zoophytes, but respectable mollusks, each with
his well-formed mouth and intestines (Botrylli), but combined in a
peculiar form of communism, of which all one can say is that one
hopes they like it.
From the bare rocks above high-water mark, down to abysses deeper
than ever plummet sounded, is life, everywhere life; fauna after
fauna, and flora after flora, arranged in zones, according to the
amount of light and warmth which each species requires, and to the
amount of pressure which they are able to endure. The crevices of
the highest rocks, only sprinkled with salt-spray in spring-tides
and high gales, have their peculiar little univalves, their crisp
lichen-like sea-weed, in myriads; lower down, the region of the Fuci
(bladder-weeds) has its own tribes of periwinkles and limpets; below
again, about the neap-tide mark, the region of the Corallines and
Algæ furnishes food for yet other species who graze on its watery
meadows; and beneath all, only uncovered at low spring-tide, the zone
of the Laminariæ (the great tangles and ore-weeds) is most full of
all of every imaginable form of life.
CRABS, PRAWNS, AND LOBSTERS
--PHILIP HENRY GOSSE
If you look at the head of a crab, a lobster, or a prawn, you will
see that it is furnished with jointed antennæ, like that of insects;
but whereas in insects there is never more than a single pair, in
the creatures of which I am speaking there are two pairs. In the
prawn you may suppose, at first sight, that there are four pairs;
but that is because the internal antennæ terminate each in three
many-jointed bristles, in structure and appearance exactly like the
bristles of the outer pair, two of the three being nearly as long as
the outer, while the third is short. In the lobster, the internal are
two-bristled, both bristles rather short, while the external are very
long. In the flat-crabs each pair is simple, the inner minute, the
outer long. In the great eatable crab each pair is very small, and
they are dissimilar.
[Illustration: Two Strange Zoophytes
1, _Holtenia Carpenteri_, a species of glass sponge; 2, _Pentacrinus
Asteria_, the only survivor of the Crinoid family]
Now taking the last-named animal as the representative of his class,
let us examine one of his inner antennæ first. It consists of a
jointed stem and a terminating bristle; the latter furnished with
small hairs common to the general surface of the body, and with long,
delicate, membraneous filaments (_setæ_), often improperly called
_cilia_, which are larger and much more delicate in structure than
the ordinary hairs.
The basal joint is greatly enlarged: if it be carefully removed from
its connection with the head, and broken open, it will be found to
inclose in its cavity a still smaller chamber, with calcareous walls
of a much more delicate character than the outer walls. This internal
shell is considered by Mr. Spence Bate to be a _cochlea_, from its
analogy, both in structure and supposed use, to the organ so named in
the internal ear of man and other vertebrate animals. It is situated,
as has been said, in the cavity of the basal joint of the internal
antennæ, and is attached to the interior surface of its wall furthest
from the median line of the crab. It has a tendency to a spiral form,
but does not pass beyond the limits of a single convolution.
If this interior cell does indeed represent the _cochlea_ of more
highly constructed ears--to which it bears some resemblance, both in
form and structure--then it seems to identify, beyond dispute, these
inner or upper antennæ as the organs of hearing.