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They are placed upon table 24, near a cast of a stem and flower, that has the appearance of a fossil plant, but is in reality a cast of a crinoid star-fish that once existed in great abundance.
But more of this hereafter. I also became much taken up with the manners and appearance of the anemones, and star-fish, and crabs, and sea-urchins, and such-like creatures; and was not content with watching those I saw during my dives in the Water Garden, but I must needs scoop out a hole in the coral rock close to it, which I filled with salt water, and stocked with sundry specimens of anemones and shell-fish, in order to watch more closely how they were in the habit of passing their time.
There were perforated stones; shells of all kinds; sea-weeds; dry star-fish; pieces of jet; bright pebbles; smooth pearly pieces of oyster-shell; tiny pebbles bright and glistening; in short, such a collection of treasures that Mr Inglis looked at his watch and declared it was time to go, for they would have to travel slowly on account of the live specimens.
Now, one day this star-fish set out on a summer journey, not to the seaside where you and I went last year: of course not, for he was there already. No; he thought he would go to the mountains.
Should they happen to alight, as they often do, upon some lounger below, and find their way to his unprotected skin, they inflict, if molested, a sting as pungent, but far more lasting, than that of a nettle or a star-fish.
Thus ever in gloom, yet in a state of constant safety from storms and the agitations of the upper air, the thousand forms of low organic life and cryptogamic vegetation live and thrive in peace and quietness. Upon the bottom, at various depths, lies that brilliant Radiate type of his class the Star-fish.
How does this look by the side of the last quotation from Darwin? Crabs or lobsters, cuttle-fish, jelly-fish, star-fish, oysters, snails, and worms lived contemporary with the first vertebrates. I have recently read an article in which it is said by an advocate of the Darwinian hypothesis, that man in his original condition was a cannibal, feasting, ordinarily, upon snails and worms.
One aggregation looms forth out of the darkness like the skeleton face of some tremendous mammoth, or other monstrous denizen of ancient times, with two small fiery eyes, however, gazing out of its great hollow orbits; another consists of a central nucleus, with arms of stars radiating forth in all directions, like a star-fish, or like the scattering fire-sparks of some pyrotechnic wheel revolving; a third resembles a great wisp of straw, or twist or coil of ropes; a fourth, a cork-screw, or other spiral, seen on end; a fifth, a crab; a sixth, a dumb-bell many of them scroll or scrolls of some thin texture seen edgewise; and so on.
The collections made along the shore in this excursion were large and various: star-fish, volutas, sea-urchins, sea-anemones, medusae, doris; many small fishes, also, from the tide-pools, beside a number drawn in the seine.
Not far from it float some little, soft, jelly-like bodies, exactly resembling the one who spoke to the star-fish just now. They are emigrants looking for a new home.
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