ly in
the case of these creatures, and even if the five arms are torn apart,
five starfish, small of arm but with healthy stomachs, will soon be
foraging on the oyster bed.

But to return to our tide-pools. In the skimming net with the young
starfish many other creatures are found, some so delicate and fragile that
they disintegrate before microscope and camera can be placed in position.
I lie at full length on a soft couch of seaweed with my face close to a
tiny pool no larger than my hand. A few armadillo shells and limpets crawl
on the bottom, but a frequent troubling of the water baffles me. I make
sure my breath has nothing to do with it, but still it continues. At last
a beam of sunshine lights up the pool, and as if a film had rolled from my
eyes I see the cause of the disturbance. A sea-worm--or a ghost of one--is
swimming about. Its large, brilliant eyes, long tentacles, and innumerable
waving appendages are now as distinct as before they had been invisible. A
trifling change in my position and all vanishes as if by magic. There
seems not an organ, not a single part of the creature, which is not as
transparent as the water itself. The fine streamers into which the paddles
and gills are divided are too delicate to have existence in any but a
water creature, and the least attempt to lift the animal from its element
would only tear and dismember it, so I leave it in the pool to await the
return of the tide.

Shrimps and prawns of many shapes and colours inhabit every pool. One
small species, abundant on the algae, combines the colour changes of a
chameleon with the form and manner of travel of a measuring-worm, looping
along the fronds of seaweed or swimming with the same motion. Another
variety of shrimp resembles the common wood-louse found under pieces of
bark, but is most beautifully iridescent, glowing like an opal at the
bottom of the pool. The curious little sea-spiders keep me guessing for a
long time where their internal organs can be, as they consist of legs with
merely enough body to connect these firmly together. The fact that the
thread-like stomach and other organs send a branch into each of the eight
legs explains the mystery and shows how far economy of space may go. Their
skeleton-forms, having the appearance of eight straggling filaments of
seaweed, are thus, doubtless, a great protection to these creatures from
their many enemies. Other hobgoblin forms with huge probosces crawl slowly
over the