after handling and petting and admiring all day long every uncouth
and venomous beast, avoid a paroxysm of horror at the sight of the
common house-spider. 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 chimaera 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; (18) 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 neighbouring 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 cannot 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-