United States or Seychelles ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The larger gorgeously coloured and graceful sea-worms contribute not a small share to the beauty of Fundy tide-pools, swimming in iridescent waves through the water or waving their Medusa-head of crimson tentacles at the bottom among the sea-lettuce. These worms form tubes of mud for themselves, and the rows of hooks on each side of the body enable them to climb up and down in their dismal homes.
An early shark, intent on picking up sea-worms, observed Stumps's foot, and licked his lips, no doubt. He sank immediately for much the same reason that little boys retire to take a race before a leap. Turning on his back, according to custom, he went at the foot like a submarine thunderbolt. Now, it was at that precise moment that Robin Wright snored, as aforesaid.
But the sea was now placid and beautiful, with the sun making his beams glance off the heaving waves in far spreading rays, while the tiny retiring wavelets left their marks upon the sand in little ripple-marks, covered all over with the casts thrown-up by the sea-worms.
Being fully exposed to the sea-breezes in three directions it is healthy, and the soft sandy heath offers great facilities for hauling up the praus, in order to secure them from sea-worms and prepare them for the homeward voyage. At its southern extremity the sand-bank merges in the beach of the island, and is backed by a luxuriant growth of lofty forest.
"Yes; crabs, sea-worms, and fish; the tentacula are furnished with minute spears with which they wound their prey and probably convey poison into the wounds." "I suppose this is salt water they are all in?" Walter said enquiringly, and was told that he was correct in his conjecture.
"This is glorious," said the doctor enthusiastically, "for as the currents of the Atlantic could not carry it to Davis's Straits, and as it has not been driven into the Polar basin by the streams of septentrional America, seeing that this tree grew under the Equator, it is evident that it comes in a straight line from Behring; and look here, you see those sea-worms which have eaten it, they belong to a hot-country species."
Although in the sea there are thousands of creatures, which, by their manner of life, are prohibited from ever passing the boundary line between land and water, yet many sea-worms, as for example the teredo, or ship-worm, are especially fashioned for living in and perhaps feeding on wood, in the shape of stray floating trees and branches, the bottoms of ships, and piles of wharves.
Before the days of copper sheathing weeds grew thick under water. Barnacles formed in clusters, stopping the speed, and sea-worms bored through the planking. Twenty thousand miles lay between the Pelican and Plymouth Sound, and Drake was not a man to run idle chances.
Let me begin this lecture with a scene in the North Atlantic 863 years since. "Bjarne Grimolfson was blown with his ship into the Irish Ocean; and there came worms and the ship began to sink under them. They had a boat which they had payed with seals' blubber, for that the sea-worms will not hurt. But when they got into the boat they saw that it would not hold them all.
Finally, there is all that is needed in every well-found vessel which is 'fit to go foreign. No vessel would go far unless its under-water parts were either sheathed, tarred, or tallowed; for sea-worms burrow alarmingly, and 'whiskers' grow like the obnoxious weeds they are. These particulars, of course, leave many important gaps in the process.
Word Of The Day