ose sole occupation is to feed
them, by means of a pair of long wooden forceps.

Reluctantly breaking away from such old friends, we pass through a door
into a long vault-like stone passage or hall, down one side of which
there seem to be high large windows, about as far apart as windows of a
long room commonly are. Behind each of these is a sea-pool like the
first one.

Take the first of the lot--Tank No. 2. It is stocked with _Serpulae_.
Sea-anemones are well-known to most people, but tube-worms are not such
familiar friends; so I will try to describe this particular kind of
"sea-gentlemen." The tube-worms are so called because, though they are
true worms (sea-worms), they do not trust their soft bodies to the sea,
as our common earth-worms trust theirs in a garden-bed, but build
themselves tubes inside which they live, popping their heads out at the
top now and then like a chimney-sweep pushing his brush out at the top
of a tall round chimney. Now if you can fancy one of our tall round
manufactory chimneys to be white instead of black, and the round
chimney-sweep's brush to have lovely gay-coloured feathers all round it
instead of dirty bristles, or if you can fancy the sweep letting off a
monster catherine-wheel at the chimney's mouth, you may have some idea
what a tube-worm's head is like when he pokes it out of his tube.

The _Serpulae_ make their tubes of chalky stuff, something like
egg-shell; and they stick them on to anything that comes to hand down
below. Those in the Great Aquarium came from Weymouth. They were dredged
up with the white pipes or tubes sticking to oyster-shells, old bottles,
stones, and what not, like bits of maccaroni glued on to old crockery
sherds. These odds and ends are overgrown, however, with weeds and
zoophytes, and (like an ugly house covered by creepers) look picturesque
rather than otherwise. The worms have small bristles down their bodies,
which serve as feet, and help them to scramble up inside their tubes,
when they wish to poke their heads out and breathe. These heads are
delicate, bright-coloured plumes. Each species has its own plume of its
own special shape and colour. They are only to be seen when the animal
is alive. A good many little _Serpulae_ have been born in the Aquarium.

Through the next window--Tank No. 3--you may see more tube-worms, with
ray-like, daisy heads, and soft muddy tubes. They are _Sabellae_.

Have you ever see a "sea-mouse"? Probably you have: pre