Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the Shore

Mystery of mysteries! Let us jest no more,— Heaven forgive us if we have jested too much on so simple a matter as that poor spider-crab, taken out of the lobster-pots, and left to die at the bottom of the boat, because his more aristocratic cousins of the blue and purple armour will not enter the trap while he is within. I am not aware whether the surmise, that these tiny zoophytes help to purify the water by exhaling oxygen gas, has yet been verified. The infusorial animalcules do so, reversing the functions of animal life, and instead of evolving carbonic acid gas, as other animals do, evolve pure oxygen. So, at least, says Liebig, who states that he found a small piece of matchwood, just extinguished, burst out again into a flame on being immersed in the bubbles given out by these living atomies. I myself should be inclined to doubt that this is the case with zoophytes, having found water in which they were growing (unless, of course, sea-weeds were present) to be peculiarly ready to become foul; but it is difficult to say whether this is owing to their deoxygenating the water while alive, like other animals, or to the fact that it is very rare to get a specimen of zoophyte in which a large number of the polypes have not been killed in the transit home, or at least so far knocked about, that (in the Anthozoa, which are far the most abundant) the polype— or rather living mouth, for it is little more— is thrown off to decay, pending the growth of a fresh one in the same cell.