Navy divers have swum through the false bottom at night when it was within less than 200 feet of the surface. They have observed enormous numbers of euphasids and other small organisms—but very few fish. This, however, is only suggestive. There is no good reason to believe the carpet has the same texture at night as by day. It is quite likely that the organisms disperse widely over the surface waters. _Snakes That Act and Look Like Worms_ There are snakes that look like snarls of six-inch-long pieces of wrapping twine. These worm snakes are the world’s closest imitators of worms. Among the most secretive of living things, they rarely come in contact with man. When they are seen they usually are mistaken for worms. Only zoologists can put them in their true families. These living strings live exclusively under the earth, sometimes in tangled snarls of scores of individuals. They are the smallest of snakes. Their closest relatives, however, are the gigantic boas and pythons. Judging from their wide distribution—on such isolated spots, for example, as Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean—they are quite ancient reptiles whose wanderings started about fifty million years ago. They are found most often in termite nests, where they eat the eggs and possibly the larvae. Small earthworms and other soil creatures add to their diet. The worm snakes are almost toothless. Eyes are buried under skin, are only faint spots, and probably only can discriminate light from darkness. The tail looks somewhat like the head—a likeness presumably developed as a camouflage. They retain a snake’s scales, but these are highly polished so they can be of no help in crawling. These Typhlopidae and Glauconidae, as the two major groups are known, are extremely active. When they are exhumed they start at once to burrow back and have been found as much as two feet underground. Occasionally they may be found in mole holes or in rotten wood where they feed on insect larvae and also, it is likely, get some warmth from the decay process. The snout is used in burrowing. They are hard to hold in the hand, owing to the high polish of the scales. There are approximately 100 species scattered over the world, two coming as far north as the Texas border. They have teeth in only one jaw—the upper jaw for Typhlopidae, the lower for Glauconidae. _A Porcupine of the Sea_ Among the weirdest creatures of the deep is also one of the latest to become known to science—the sea urchin (closely related to star fish) astropyga magnifica. It is the largest sea urchin yet found in the Atlantic. It has approximately 200 bright blue eyes arranged in double rows. The body is covered with several hundred sharp, barbed black spines nearly a foot long.