First, then, in the living specimen which I have here, those alcoves are not open as in the dead piece, but covered over with a transparent skin, in which, near the top of the alcove just where the curve begins, is a slit (_s_ 2, Fig. 10) Unfortunately, the membrane covering this alcove is too dense for you to distinguish the parts within. Presently, however, if you are watching a piece of this living leaf in a flat water-cell under the microscope, you will see the slit slowly open, and begin to turn as it were inside out, exactly like the finger of a glove, which has been pushed in at the tip, gradually rises up when you put your finger inside it. As this goes on, a bundle of threads appears, at first closed like a bud, but gradually opening out into a crown of tentacles, each one clothed with hairs. Then you will see that the slit was not exactly a slit after all, but the round edge where the sac was pushed in. Ah! you will say, you are now showing me a polyp like those on the sertularian tree. Not so fast, my friend; you have not studied what is still under the covering skin and hidden in the living animal. I have, however, prepared a slide with this membrane removed and there you can observe the different parts, and learn that each one of these alcoves contains a complete animal, and not merely one among many mouths, like the polyp on Sertularia. [Illustration: FIG. 11. DIAGRAM OF THE ANIMAL IN THE FLUSTRA OR SEA-MAT. 1, Animal protruding. 2, Animal retracted in the sheath, _sh_, Covering sheath, _s_, Slit. _t_, Tentacles. _m_, Mouth. _th_, Throat, _st_, Stomach. _i_, Intestine, _r_, Retractor muscle, _e_, Egg-forming parts. _g_, Nerve-ganglion.] Each of these little beings (_a_, Fig. 10) living in its alcove has a mouth, throat, stomach, intestine, muscles, and nerves starting from the ganglion of nervous matter, besides all that is necessary for producing eggs and sending forth young ones. You can trace all these under the microscope (see 2, Fig. 11) as the creature lies curiously doubled up in its bed, with its body bent in a loop; the intestine _i_, out of which the refuse food passes, coming back close up to the slit. When it is at rest, the top of the sac in which it lies is pulled in by the retractor muscle _r_, and looks, as I have said, like the finger of a glove with the top pushed in. When it wishes to feed this top is drawn out by muscles running round the sac, and the tentacles open and wave in the water (1, Fig. 11).