Choose one of the most conspicuous of these diminutive tapers, and, without removing it from the shell, carry it towards the gas-lamp. As you approach, the brilliancy of the star declines; and when the full flood of light is thrown upon the shell, it nearly, or entirely disappears. If you press your finger rudely upon the spot, you will again perceive the luminous matter diffused, like a fluid, over the surrounding surface, and shining, for an instant, more brightly than ever, even under the immediate glare of the gas. Then all is over. You have crushed one of the glow-worms of the deep—an animal, once probably as vain of his golden flame as you of any of your brilliant endowments—perhaps some sentinel there stationed to alarm his sleeping brethren of the approach of danger—perhaps an animalcular Hero trimming her solitary lamp to guide her chosen one, through more than Leander’s dangers, along the briny path to her rocky bower, beset by all the microscopic monsters of the corallines! At all events, despise it as you may, this little being was possessed of life, susceptible of happiness, and endowed with power to outshine, with inborn lustre, the richest gem in Europe’s proudest diadem! The sea is filled in many regions, and at various seasons, with incalculable multitudes of living creatures, in structure much resembling this little parasite, but often vastly more imposing in dimensions. The smallest tribes that are able to call attention to their individual existence generally wander, like erratic stars, beneath the waves. They may be seen by thousands shooting past the vessel, on evenings when the moon is absent or obscured, suddenly lighting their torches when the motion of the bow produces a few curling swells and breakers on either hand, and whirling from eddy to eddy, as they sweep along the side and are lost in the wake. From time to time the vessel, in her progress, disturbs some large being of similar powers, who instantly ejects a trail of luminous fluid which, twining, and waving about among contending currents, assumes the semblance of a silver snake. But the most surprising of all proofs of the infinity of life is furnished by those inconceivably numerous bands of shining animalcules, too small for human vision, which in their aggregate effect perform, perhaps, the grandest part in beautifying the night scene on the ocean.