The first thing that our fingers pull up is a great tangled group of
Sertularian _Hydrozoa_, of which the finest part consists of some
half-dozen stems of _Antennularia_, called, from obvious resemblance,
the Lobster-horn Coralline.[133] These are nearly straight, somewhat
stiff, unbranched stems, a foot or more in length, with an uniform
thickness of about a line, of a buff-yellow hue, closely divided into
short joints. Each of the joints gives origin to a whorl of very
delicate bristles, giving a hairy appearance to the whole affair, but
which under magnifying power are discerned to be colourless, jointed
filaments, bearing on the inner shoulder of each joint a tiny glassy
cup (_hydrotheca_), within which resides a minute many-tentacled
polype. The stems spring in close groups from an obscure root-mass
of tangled threads, which cling to stones and shells, and afford a
mooring to the Lobster-horn, which in its turn affords support to
miniature forests of other _Hydrozoa_, slenderer than the finest
hair--_Laomedea_, _Campanularia_, etc., which crowd together on it,
especially around the bottom, and make the investigation of any one
specimen very difficult. These have their polype-cups of exquisitely
elegant forms, and I see on the latter many of the urn-shaped vessels
(now called _gonotheca_), out of which issue what appear to be distinct
and independent forms of life, as unlike the parent as can well be
imagined, but exactly like the little naked-eyed Medusæ that we lately
looked at. This, however, is not properly an animal at all, but only
an organ (the _gonophore_) which has the faculty of maintaining a
separate existence, and which is destined to give birth to ciliated
embryos, like the _planula_ of the _Aurelia_, that attach themselves,
and develop into new _Campanulariæ_. Most wonderful are the processes
and phases of life which have been discovered in these zoophytic
forms.[134] A volume might be written on them, full of praise to the
all-wise God.
[Illustration: