the beautiful form which belongs to their race, but not their
delicate colour. There are a few more bivalves too, adhering to
the stone, and those rare ones, and two or three delicate Mangeliae
and Nassae (21) are trailing their graceful spires up and down in
search of food. That little bright red and yellow pea, too, touch
it - the brilliant coloured cloak is withdrawn, and, instead, you
have a beautiful ribbed pink cowry, (22) our only European
representative of that grand tropical family. Cast one wondering
glance, too, at the forest of zoophytes and corals, Lepraliae and
Flustrae, and those quaint blue stars, set in brown jelly, which
are no zoophytes, but respectable molluscs, each with his well-
formed mouth and intestines, (23) but combined in a peculiar form
of Communism, of which all one can say is, that one hopes they like
it; and that, at all events, they agree better than the heroes and
heroines of Mr. Hawthorne's "Blithedale Romance."

Now away, and as a specimen of the fertility of the water-world,
look at this rough list of species, (24) the greater part of which
are on this very stone, and all of which you might obtain in an
hour, would the rude tide wait for zoologists: and remember that
the number of individuals of each species of polype must be counted
by tens of thousands; and also, that, by searching the forest of
sea-weeds which covers the upper surface, we should probably obtain
some twenty minute species more.

A goodly catalogue this, surely, of the inhabitants of three or
four large stones; and yet how small a specimen of the
multitudinous nations of the sea!

From the bare rocks above high-water mark, down to abysses deeper