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To very few does this term recall either the large Discophore, with its purple disk and its long streamers floating perhaps twenty or thirty feet behind it as it swims, or the Ctenophore, with its more delicate, transparent structure, and almost invisible fringes in parallel rows upon the body, which decompose the rays of light as the creature moves through the water, so that hues of ruby-red and emerald-green, blue, purple, yellow, all the colors of the rainbow, ripple constantly over its surface when it is in motion, or the Hydroid, with its little shrub-like communities living in tide-pools, establishing themselves on rocks, shells, or sea-weeds, and giving birth not only to animals attached to submarine bodies, like themselves, but also to free Medusae or Jelly-Fishes that in their turn give birth again to eggs which return to the parent-form, and thus, by alternate generations, maintain two distinct patterns of animal life within one cycle of growth.
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.
It can laugh at the rage of the oysterman, who angrily tears it in pieces, for "time heals all wounds" literally 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.
Even in a fairy-story book this would be wonderful, but here it is taking place under our very eyes, as are scores of other transformations and "miracles in miniature" in this marvellous underworld. Now let us deliberately pass by all the attractions of the middle zone of tide-pools and on as far as the lowest level of the water will admit.
Then we remembered being very thirsty once on a long picnic-walk ages ago, and Father wrapping his handkerchief around the top of the tin can the soup had come in and giving us a drink at a pump. So we knew that we could do that with the broken bottle. Jerry dodged out into the rain through the tide-pools and came back after a while with some water.
Others like the tide-pools, higher up on the rocks, that are freshened by the waves only when the tide is full: such are the small, creeping Campanularians.
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.
The pleasure derived from the aquarium comes from the excitement of finding and collecting specimens, as well as from watching the tank itself. There can be no more pleasant accompaniment to the sea-side walk of the casual visitor or summer resident of a watering-place, than to search for marine plants and animals among the fissures, rocks, and tide-pools of the sea-washed beach or cape.
She had remained at first on the beach with Pierre, for they had neither of them any wish to play at running about among the rocks and paddling in the tide-pools; and yet they had felt doubtful about staying together. She was afraid of him, and her son was afraid of her and of himself; afraid of his own cruelty which he could not control. But they sat down side by side on the stones.
The crabs were worthy tenants of such strange architecture, with comical eyes twiddling on the end of their stalks, and their white-mittened fists feinting and threatening as I looked into their little dark rain or tide-pools. I found three pockets on one wall, which seemed as if they must have been "salted" for my benefit; and in them, as elsewhere on my beach, the two extremes of life met.
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