or so. It is really magnificent, and will be a permanent
memorial which could be seen from the ship nine miles off with a naked
eye. It stands nine feet out of the rocks, and many feet into the ground,
and I do not believe it will ever move. When it was up, facing out over
the Barrier, we gave three cheers and one more."

We got back to the ship all right and coasted up the Western Mountains to
Granite Harbour; a wonderfully interesting trip to those of us who had
only seen these mountains from a distance. Gran went off to pick up a
depot of geological specimens. Lillie did a trawl.

This was an absorbing business, though it was only one of a long and
important series made during the voyages of the Terra Nova. Here were all
kinds of sponges, siliceous, glass rope, tubular, and they were generally
covered with mucus. Some fed on diatoms so minute that they can only be
collected by centrifuge: some have gastric juices to dissolve the
siliceous skeletons of the diatoms on which they feed: they anchor
themselves in the mud and pass water in and out of their bodies:
sometimes the current is stimulated by cilia. There were colonies of
Gorgonacea, which share their food unselfishly; and corals and marine
degenerate worms, which started to live in little cells like coral, but
have gone down in the world. And there were starfishes, sea-urchins,
brittle-stars, feather-stars and sea-cucumbers. The sea-urchins are
formed of hexagonal plates, the centre of each of which is a ball, upon
which a spine works on a ball and socket joint. These spines are used for
protection, and when large they can be used for locomotion. But the real
means of locomotion are five double rows of water-tube feet, working by
suction, by which they withdraw the water inside a receptacle in the
shell, thereby forming a vacuum; starfishes do the same. We found a
species of sea-urchin which had such large spines that they practically
formed bars; the spines were twice as long as the sea-urchin and shaped
just like oars, being even fluted. A lobster grows by discarding his
suit, hiding and getting another, growing meanwhile. A snail or an oyster
retains his original shell, and adds to it in layers all the way down,
increasing one edge. But our sea-urchin grows by an increment of
calcareous matter all round the outside of each plate. As the animal
grows the plates get bigger.

There was a sea-cucumber which nurses its young, having a brood cavity
which is real