The old dervish divided the seventeen camels into the desired proportions by adding one of his own to the number, thus making it eighteen. The eldest brother then took his half—nine; the second his third—six; the third his ninth—two, making seventeen in all, and giving back the one camel over to its owner, the wise dervish.
PEEPS INTO NATURE'S NURSERIES.
XII.—ONE OF NATURE'S FAILURES.
We have now come to the last chapter of our series, and herein I propose to bring to your notice some curious facts which 'point a moral and adorn a tale' that should not be lost sight of.
Strange though it be, there are many creatures, among what we sometimes call the 'lower order of creation,' which give promise of great things during the earlier period of their lives, but later degenerate out of all recognition.
Let us take one or two of the more remarkable instances. Many of you, when at the seaside, must have found, clinging to rocks and shells, peculiar, tough, leathery and somewhat bottle-shaped bodies, popularly known as 'sea-squirts,' from their habit of squirting out water when touched. But how many of you have any idea that these same 'squirts' really belong to the great division of vertebrates or backboned animals? Yet such is the case, though not even scientific men were aware of this until the facts which I am about to relate were discovered.
But before I proceed, I might add that while some of these sea-squirts lead solitary lives, fast anchored to the rock or sea-weed, others form colonies, while yet others, and more distantly related forms, are transparent and swim, sometimes in countless millions, at the surface of the sea, covering an area of several miles. Some of the stationary forms make coats for themselves of sand, others build them houses to live in. While most are dull-coloured, some are, on the contrary, very brilliant. Their range in size is no less varied, some being almost microscopic, while others attain a length of as much as four feet.
But though so different in their adult stages, they all begin life as vertebrated or backboned animals, though in some this stage is more perfect than in others.
