The story of the universe. Volume 4 (of 4) : $b The earth's creatures : fauna
History
The story of the universe. Volume 4 (of 4) : $b The earth's creatures : fauna
Astronomy; Earth (Planet); Natural history
Look, again, at those sea-slugs. One, some three inches long, of a
bright lemon-yellow, clouded with purple; another of a dingy gray
(Doris tuberculata and bilineata); another exquisite little creature
of a pearly French white, furred all over the back with what seem
arms, but are really gills, of ringed white and gray and black (Eolis
papilosa). Put that yellow one into water, and from his head, above
the eyes, arise two serrated horns, while from the after part of his
back springs a circular Prince-of-Wales’s-feather of gills--they
are exactly like those which we saw just now in the white Cucumaria.
Yes; here is another instance of the same custom of repetition. The
Cucumaria is a low radiate animal--the sea-slug a far higher mollusk;
and every organ within him is formed on a different type; as, indeed,
are those seemingly identical gills, if you come to examine them
under the microscope, having to oxygenate fluids of a very different
and complicated kind; and, moreover, the Cucumaria’s gills were put
round his mouth, the Doris’s feathers round the other extremity;
that gray Eolis’s again, are simple clubs, scattered over his whole
back, and in each of his nudibranch congeners these same gills take
some new and fantastic form; in Melibæa those clubs are covered with
warts; in Scyllæa, with tufted bouquets; in the beautiful Antiopa
they are transparent bags; and in many other English species they
take every conceivable form of leaf, tree, flower, and branch,
bedecked with every color of the rainbow, as you may see them
depicted in Messrs. Alder and Hancock’s unrivaled _Monograph on the
Nudibranch Mollusca_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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