The Arizona sentinel., 1886-08-14
A HOUSE OF SHELL.
The Many Wonderful Things Packed in
 One Little Box.

I A-
 One Little Box.
 Most of the curious things you pick up on the seashore are really wrecks- deserted houses, cast-off clothes, or outgrown cradles and retreats of some of the many strange and wonderful creatures that live in the sea. If we could read the tales they might tell we should have a more fascinating and marvellous story book than was ever printed. Some of them we can read, thanks to close watching and long study, and I want to tell you few oi the queer things we have found out.
 One of the prettiest objects to be found on the shore is lovely box as white as snow, and more fragile than the thinnest china. It is covered with a pattern of tiny knobs and holes, that look like delicate carving, and it is round in shape, fattened on top ex- actly like a common white turnip. These boxes are found of many sizes, from little ones, the size of pea, up to great-grandmothers as big as the top of tumble, and in some parts of the world as big as a dining plate.
 In this elegant house lived once a very strange fellow called sea urchin. His mouth opened on the under side of his body, where the larger hole is in the shell, and at that point he had five big teeth, quite able to cut and dispose of any thing he wished to eat His house, this pretty box, was covered with long, sharp spines like thorns, that made him an unpleasant fellow to take up. A spine stood up on every one of the tiny knobs on the shell, and could move about on it, exactly as you can move your arm on the shoulder.
 His feet were perhaps the oldest part of him, though every thing about him was strange. To begin with, he had dozens of them; one coming out of each of the little holes on the shell. Then they could be stretched out as long as he wished, and the legs you may call them) were, of course, not larger than threads. The foot itself, at the end of each thread-like leg, was round flat, like a boys leather sucker" and they worked in the same way; that is, when the urchin wanted to walk he thrust out his feet on one side till they touched some thing, where they stuck, held there, it is said, by drawing out the air under them; then he pulled himself along.
 If you find one alive, as you easily can in the pools among the rocks on our rocky coasts Gas in Maine), and put him in soup plate of sea water, you will soon see how he walks. He will push out dozens of silvery threads, fasLen the little round feet at the ends to the side of the plate, and travel quite rapidly around it, to find the way out. Try to lift him then, and you will find you can not do it except by tear ing away some of his feet
 One of the most interesting things is the way he grows. The baby sea urchin is about as big as the dot over one of the Us on this page; one can just see it moving slowly about in the water; but with a microscope he proves to be sa elegant little fellow, of the oldest shape, perhaps more like painters easel than any thing else. It is made of clear, glassy-looking rods, with rose-colored tips on some of the upper ones, and covered with little specks that reflect light and make it very brilliant It moves about by way ing in the water fringes of delicate hairs-cilia the books call them-and it is so very small that the waving of hairs will move it about.
 Now, what is oldest about this queer object is really sort of living cradle, for after awhile the real baby forms on one side, and as it grows and becomes able to take care of itself, the beautiful glassy cradle wastes away, till, when the young urchin can use its feet. and drag about its cradle tor nurse, as it has been called), it wholly disappears, and the infant has nothing to do but grow.
 How do you suppose this delicate shell house gets biggerP for the urchin never has but one, and when he was the size of pin-head it was not too big for him, and when he is as large as a teacup it still fits him. Let me tell you. When the owner lived in it the box was made of several hundred pieces, and covered by the thin skin of the living urchin. One work of this skin was to enlarge the house as fast as he grew, and it was done by con- stant adding of building material to the edges of each piece. thus each one became bigger, and yet they always fitted together. So you may say that the box grew as well as the urchin that lived in it.
 Surely more wonders were never packed in one little box; and haven't told you all of them, either. It would take the whole paper to give the com plete history of this strange little creat- ure.
 When the urchin is dead the spines fall of, the body disappears, the sun bleaches it, and you may find his emp ty houses by hundreds cast up among the sea-drift on the shore.- Christian Union.