The Ocean World: Being a Description of the Sea and Its Living Inhabitants.

Under this denomination is comprehended many of the fishes which are most familiar to us. They are characterized, as we have said elsewhere, as a group of animals having a solid...

The class Acalephæ, from ἀκαλήφη, a nettle, so called from the stinging properties which many of them possess, include a great number of radiate animals of which the Medusæ are...

It will not be out of place here to offer some remarks on animals in general, including the whole kingdom as well as the great divisions which form the subject of this particula...

"I saw the living pile ascend The mausoleum of its architects, Still dying upwards as their labour closed: Slime the material, but the slime was turned To adamant by their petri...

diverging at an angle of forty-five degrees. These posts were driven about a yard asunder; they were about twelve feet long, six feet being above water, and interlaced with bran...

In their "Natural History of the Echinodermata," Messrs. Hupé and Dujardin divide this vast natural group into five orders or families, namely: 1, _Asteroïdæ_, which includes th...

The ocean is a scene of unceasing agitation; "its vast surface rises and falls," to use the image suggested by Schleiden, "as if it were gifted with a gentle power of respiratio...

The highest class of Molluscs is the Cephalopoda, which has been divided by Professor Owen into two Orders, _Tetrabranchiata_, or animals having four branchiæ, and the _Dibranch...

The _Pulmonary Gasteropods_ comprehend those molluscs which, as we have said, live in the air and breathe the natural atmosphere. The respiratory organ is a cavity in the walls...

It is estimated that the sea covers nearly two-thirds of the surface of the earth. The calculation, as given by astronomers, is as follows: The surface of the earth is 31,625,62...

The name Mollusca indicates the characters which most struck the ancients: they are soft--in Latin, _mollis_: their flesh is cold, humid, and viscous. In consequence of their ve...

Before speaking of the habits of the principal kinds of fishes, it is desirable to glance at their organization, and upon the manner in which they execute their physiological fu...

"As for your pretty little seed-cups or vases, they are a sweet confirmation of the pleasure Nature seems to take in superadding elegance of form to most of her works. How poor...

The animals of this class, as regards organisation, must be placed higher in the scale than the Arachnidæ, or spiders; but they are beneath the Mollusca, although as regards aff...

The Bryozoaires, or Polyzoa, as British naturalists prefer to call them, form the boundary-line which divides the humble mollusc from the humbler zoophytes. In consequence of th...

"The appearance of the open sea," says Frédol, from whose elegant work this chapter is chiefly compiled, "far from the shore--the boundless ocean--is to the man who loves to cre...

We shall now consider the Gasteropoda, which is divided into four orders. Firstly, Nucleobranchiata, animals which float on the surface of the ocean: they are Diæcious, or in se...

The well-known shell of the mussel (Fig. 157, _Mytilus edulis_) is longitudinal, equivalve, and regular, pointed at the base, with capacity to attach itself by a byssus; the hin...

The position of the Pteropoda is somewhat unsatisfactory. Their organization in some respects places them below the level of the Gasteropods; but yet the general feeling amongst...

Entering on the class Polypifera, we leave the domain of the infinitely small to enter the world of the visible. Beside the Infusoria, the Polypifera, which are sometimes severa...