Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the Shore

[Picture: Plate 1: Flustra Lineata etc.] So much have we seen on one little shell. But there is more to see close to it. Those yellow plants which I likened to squirrels’ tails and lobsters’ horns, and what not, are zoophytes of different kinds. Here is Sertularia argentea (true squirrel’s tail); here, S. filicula, as delicate as tangled threads of glass; here, abietina; here, rosacea. The lobsters’ horns are Antennaria antennina; and mingled with them are Plumulariæ, always to be distinguished from Sertulariæ by polypes growing on one side of the branch, and not on both. Here is falcata, with its roots twisted round a sea-weed. Here is cristata, on the same weed; and here is a piece of the beautiful myriophyllum, which has been battered in its long journey out of the deep water about the ore rock. For all these you must consult Johnson’s “Zoophytes,” and for a dozen smaller species, which you would probably find tangled among them, or parasitic on the sea-weed. Here are Flustræ, or sea-mats. This, which smells very like Verbena, is Flustra coriacea (Pl. I. Fig. 2). That scurf on the frond of ore-weed is F. lineata (Pl. Fig. 1). The glass bells twined about this Sertularia are Campanularia syringa (Pl. I. Fig. 9); and here is a tiny plant of Cellularia ciliata (Pl. I. Fig. 8). Look at it through the field-glass; for it is truly wonderful. Each polype cell is edged with whip-like spines, and on the back of some of them is— what is it, but a live vulture’s head, snapping and snapping— what for?