a living,
tangled labyrinth as deadly as the hair of the fabled Medusa--whose name
indeed has been so appropriately applied to this division of animals. The
touch of each tentacle to the skin is like a lash of nettle, and there
would be little hope for a diver whose path crossed such a fiery tangle.
The untold myriads of little darts which are shot out secrete a poison
which is terribly irritating.

On the crevice bottoms a sight now and then meets my eyes which brings the
"devil-fish" of Victor Hugo's romance vividly to mind,--a misshapen squid
making its way snakily over the shells and seaweed. Its large eyes gaze
fixedly around and the arms reach alternately forward, the sucking cups
lined with their cruel teeth closing over the inequalities of the bottom.
The creature may suddenly change its mode of progression and shoot like an
arrow, backward and upward. If we watch one in its passage over areas of
seaweed and sand, a wonderful adaptation becomes apparent. Its colour
changes continually; when near sand it is of a sombre brown hue, then
blushes of colour pass over it and the tint changes, corresponding to the
seaweed or patches of pink sponge over which it swims. The way in which
this is accomplished is very ingenious and loses nothing by examination.
Beneath the skin are numerous cells filled with liquid pigment. When at
rest these contract until they are almost invisible, appearing as very
small specks or dots on the surface of the body. When the animal wishes to
change its hue, certain muscles which radiate from these colour cells are
shortened, drawing the cells out in all directions until they seem
confluent. It is as if the freckles on a person's face should be all
joined together, when an ordinary tan would result.

From bottoms ten to twenty fathoms below the surface, deeper than mortal
eye can probably ever hope to reach, the dredge brings up all manner of
curious things; basket starfish, with arms divided and subdivided into
many tendrils, on the tips of which it walks, the remaining part
converging upward like the trellis of a vine-covered summer house. Sponges
of many hues must fairly carpet large areas of the deep water, as the
dredge is often loaded with them. The small shore-loving ones which I
photographed are in perfect health, but the camera cannot show the many
tiny currents of water pouring in food and oxygen at the smaller openings,
and returning in larger streams from the tall funnels on the