File:Popular history of the aquarium of marine and fresh-water animals and plants (1857) (14767317014).jpg

Identifier: popularhistoryof00sowe (find matches)
Title: Popular history of the aquarium of marine and fresh-water animals and plants
Year: 1857 (1850s)
Authors: Sowerby, George Brettingham, 1788-1854
Subjects: Aquariums Marine biology Freshwater biology
Publisher: London : Lovell Reeve
Contributing Library: MBLWHOI Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MBLWHOI Library

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atthe end of its projected tube. It is rather a large AYorm,beset with the usual bundles of satiny bristles, goldentinted. The fans are broadly plumose and spirally curved,forming a kind of shallow funnel, white and brown banded.Mr. Gosse has noticed, in another species, S. vesictdosa, apower of reproducing mutilated parts, and even forming en-tirely WQN fans. Sabella alveolata. Congregations of this Worm make parallel tubes of sand,fitting into each other, and composing a mass resembhnga honeycomb. Entire floors of caves are sometimes coveredwith this structure. The species is commonly called the^ Honeycomb Wormy Terebella conchilega.—(Plate I. fig. 2, 3.)In turning over loose stones and gravel on a sandy shoreat low-water, you may find very brittle tubes composed ofminute pebbles, grains of sand, and small shells, neatlyfitted and cemented together. They are the work of amarine mason, who has built them for his own occupation.The Terebella is a worm, which, instead of the fan-Uke
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SEA-WORMS. 189 comb of gills displayed by the Sahellce and Serpulce, only putsforth a truncated head adorned by a great number of longthread-like tentacles. These tentacles, wandering far andwide, adhere to little specks of sand and bits of shell, whichthey bring together and cement in a circular wall, so as toform their tube. This gravelly dwelling is not made, hkesome tubes, by the mere fortuitous rolling together of par-ticles in the glairy secretion surrounding the body of theanimal; but regularly and systematically laid on, fragmentby fragment, to the edge of the structure. At the largerend of the tube may be observed a number of very thinbranching tubes, formed of more minute grains of sand.These are sheaths, ^Yith which the working tentacula havetemporarily clothed themselves, and from which they havewithdrawn. Specimens in captivity were observed by Mr. Gosse toabandon their tubes and crawl about the glass jar by meansof their tentacles, which adhered to its sides. They alsocr

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