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read, we may suggest that it is the large and increasing section of the nature-loving public who indulge in the use of the microscope, as a source of instruction and amusement, that awakens our sympathies and, as it seems to us, desire and require some introduction to the marvels of marine life, as a preliminary to more specific knowledge, the direction of which they will thereafter be better able to choose. Unless we are mistaken in the wants of this large group of workers and readers, they desire some volume which gives, within a reasonable compass, an outline of the structure and habits of a number of families of marine animals, not otherwise to be obtained except by wading through several volumes, and learning a copious vocabulary of technicalities. With this interpretation of what is desirable, we have attempted to fulfil the conditions in such a manner as to be able to appeal also to those who, without microscopical proclivities, seek an introduction to these "Toilers in the Sea."

Wherefore are coral reefs and their builders included, when they are tropical, and beyond the reach and experience of the ordinary British reader? Simply because our scope is wider than to provide a mere introduction to the marine zoology of our own shores, a fact accomplished beforehand, since such a restriction is hardly compatible with a general survey of ocean homes and their builders. And if

it is conceded to be a legitimate project to endeavour to arouse a greater interest in the minute inhabitants of the ocean, which construct and leave behind them such marvellous structures, as evidence of their ingenuity and perseverance, it would have been most unwarrantable to have excluded one of the most interesting and remarkable groups. There are many charming books for the seaside, with which we had no ambition to compete; most delightful companions which any lounger at our numerous watering-places could not fail to appreciate and enjoy. The Rev. Charles Kingsley's "Glaucus, or Wonders of the Shore," is one of the most fascinating little volumes for young readers. Mr. P. H. Gosse is a veteran in the field of marine zoology, with half a dozen volumes; and we cannot forget Mr. G. H. Lewes's "Seaside Studies," besides a host of others, with more or less pretensions, and yet none of these appeared to touch, or more than touch, that phase of marine life to which these pages are devoted. And yet this can hardly be called a "seaside book" after the manner in which they are seaside books, although some knowledge of ordinary marine life would, perhaps, render it the more intelligible.

It is wholly unnecessary to advance any plea on behalf of the study of marine life, in the face of abundant evidence that every year increases its interest, and largely augments the number, not by any means a small one, of those who have made it their permanent choice. To those who have no desire for serious study, and no leisure withal, we would commend the perusal of the following passage which occurs in Quatrefages' charming volumes, and will merit a passing reflection :- " If you still preserve any of those illusions which, day by day are vanishing amid the turmoils of life, if you regret the dreams that have fled never to return, go to the ocean side, and there on its sonorous banks you will assuredly recall some of the golden fancies that shed their radiance over the hours of your youth. If your heart have been struck by any of those poignant griefs which darken a whole life, go to the borders of the sea, seek out some lonely beach, beyond reach of the exacting conventualities of society, and when your spirit is well-nigh broken with anguish, seek some elevated rock, where your eye may at once scan the heaving ocean and the firmament above; listen to the grand harmonious voices of the winds and waves, as at one moment they seem to murmur gentle melodies, and at another swell in the thundering crash of their majesty; mark the capricious undulations of the waves, as far as the bounds of the horizon, where they merge into the fantastic figures of the clouds and seem to rise before your eyes into the liquid

sky above. Give yourself up to the sense of infinitude which is stealing over your mind, and soon the tears you shed will have lost their bitterness; you will feel ere long that there is nothing in this world which can so thoroughly alleviate the sorrows of the heart as the contemplation of nature, and of the sublime spectacle of creation, which leads us back to God."1

Thousands of those who rush every year to the sea shore, embued with no particular feeling but that of enjoying themselves, in a manner of their own selection, return with a lively sense of physical benefit, and we would hope, in many cases, of intellectual also. The latter class might be considerably augmented, without any diminution in the results attributed to the former, provided they could be stimulated to the use of the observing eye. This could be hardly accomplished better than by indicating the direction in which the observing eye should be turned, and if this be achieved this volume will justify itself.

No event of modern times has so greatly stimulated the student of marine life as the publication of the results of the "Challenger" expedition, and to some extent this has reacted upon those who cannot exactly be described as `students, but only as lovers of nature. There was a period, not very remote, when the botany and zoology of the shore was held to represent the whole of marine life. Then low water-mark was almost the limit of investigation, and for the majority the absolute limit. Sea-weeds, anemones, shells of molluscs, zoophytes, and stranded sponges, were, apart from fish and crustacea, the totality of marine life. But now these are almost discarded in favour of the denizens of the depths of the sea. The waves of enthusiasm at different times set in different directions, determined perhaps by some single circumstance, and in that direction which they assume, are probably persistent for a considerable period, until some new impulse is given, and the current is changed. To know something of the most extraordinary of the "Toilers in the Sea," the most expert builders of " ocean homes," we must go beyond the littoral zone, and explore the dark abysses, where the light of the sun and the eye of man has never penetrated.

All the preliminary facts which it is necessary to call to remembrance here, in reference to the ocean in which our organisms flourish, may be indicated by a short retrospect, for the most part abstracted from Sir Wyville Thomson's "Depths of the Sea." Taking for granted that three-fourths of the surface of the globe is covered by the sea, and until very recent times so little was known of its depths, and so