Fig. 75.—Marine worm (Cirratulus).
Fig. 76.—A marine worm (Nereis).
Probably the most beautiful of all worms are those of the sea, the marine forms found everywhere from the mud banks to the long fronds of kelp washed by the foaming sea. Perhaps the most gorgeous creature taken from deep water is Aphrodite, several inches long, an inch across, and about the size of a mouse. The worms are provided with an array of iridescent bristles, so beautiful as to appear artificial, blazing with golden lights. Some of these worms are covered with strange and brilliantly colored streamers, as Cirratulus (Fig. 75). Others are long and slender, as Nereis (Fig. 76), a very common form alongshore. It is sought after by fishes with good appetites, and often caught, despite the fact that it has four eyes, four hundred paddles, and fierce jaws for seizing prey. Nereis lives in the sand in a tunnel. It has a habit of coming out at night and swimming abroad, when, creating a blaze of light, it becomes a very conspicuous object and is quickly caught by some wandering fish. These worms are among the most brilliant of all light givers; not alone for the intensity of light, but for its variety in tint and color. The most remarkable light givers are Polynoë, Syllis, Chætopterus, and Polycirrus. The first-mentioned emits a green light at the attachment of each scale. In the second the feet are light givers and emit a blue light. In the third the light blazes on the back at the tenth joint alone. The last is a worm of fire, the strange, little understood light blazing over its entire surface, a vivid blue.
Fig. 77.—A tube-secreting worm.
I was once sitting on the shore of Avalon Bay in southern California when, in the darkest corner in the shadow of a high cliff, I saw, two hundred feet away, what appeared like candle lights floating upon the surface. Rowing a boat to the lights, I found that each one came from a spot of phosphorescence floating on the surface. When it moved, as it often did, phosphorescence streamed away in its wake. When taken in my hand the latter became bathed with the light which ran from the invisible animal. I succeeded in capturing one entire light, but could not make out the animal. Soon I noticed lights upon the bottom in water five feet deep. They appeared to be as large as saucers, but grew rapidly in size until they were as large as dinner plates, then the yellow light gradually diminished until it was not larger than a hazelnut, and came wriggling upward in a zigzag of fire, finally reaching the surface and resting, as one of the peculiar lights I had seen so far away. I captured several, and in the morning found that my light giver was a minute sea worm not half an inch in length. When discovered, the little animal was leaving its burrow or cave in the sand for a nightly swim at the surface.
Many of the most beautiful of the marine worms are cell builders (Fig. 77). In some the worms secrete a tube of carbonate of lime. In others the den is made of bits of sand. I found on the Florida Reef many remarkable examples of the latter. The nest or tube was built among the seaweed, several inches above the bottom, and would naturally be a conspicuous object; but here the intelligence of the little creature is seen, for it covers the outside of the column with the plates of a lime-secreting seaweed, which look like shingles, and mounts upon the upper portion of the column a green bit of seaweed. This is glued to the tube and so arranged that it falls over the entrance and closes it, thus serving the purpose of a door and making the tube mimic a bit of sea grass. The worm lifts the grass door when it comes out.
