The Arizona sentinel., 1886-10-09
A CITY IN RUINS.

The Colony of Little Animals Which
 Once Lived in Thousands of Cradles
 Not So Harmless They Seem.
 Nothing that we find on the beach is more of wreck than the torn bit of seaweed that we preserve and spread so carefully and that is so beautiful; but the wrecks I am telling about were all the homes of living animals, and among your seaweed-ifyou have any T have no doubt you can find at least two or three genuine wrecks, not of one creatures home, but of whole cit ies of little animals.
 When you pick up what looks like a bit of weed, but is rather stiff and horny, keeping its shape as you handle it, you may be sure it is no weed. If it is shaped like tiny shrub, an inch or two high, it is one that is very com mon on our shores, the BugULG turritG. If you look closely at it, even with a common magnifying glass or ''linen glass" you will see that 1t is in little joints. Well, at every one of these joints is little cell, or room you may call it, and when it was in the sea a little creature lived in each one. It could draw itself down into a mere lump in the bottom, or it conld thrust out daisy-shaped head and draw the sea-water into its mouth.
 W hat is strangest about them, all the little fellows that lived in one of these small shrubs were connected together in such a way, through the hollow stems, that they were like one animal, and lived and died to- gether. And, wonderful to say, it is all one family, and grew from one mere dot of sea baby, which swan around by means of the fringe of hairs or ella, till it wished to settle, when it became fixed on a shell or a weed, and began this great family of hundreds of creatures.
 Sometimes you will find on broad seaweed or a shell flat colony of these little creatures, standing out like the spokes of wheel. and branching in every direction. This is the CrisiG eburned, and it had its tenant at every joint. Nothing could be prettier than this little white city when a fairy-hke blossom opened at every joint.
 One of the most curious of these queer cities is called the leafy sea-mat. It looks like thick-leaved plant, from a half-inch to two or three inches high. and of brownish color. Look carefully at it, especially if you have a glass, and you will see that it is GOV cred with little cells shaped like tiny slippers, or, as one writer calls them, cradles They do look like cradles, the more so as each one has it's living baby in it.
 Some of fthese big sea families grow in the shape of lovely feather from one inch to three inches long; it is Ser tularia, and 1 dare say you have one among your seaweeds-Dearly every one has It is yellowish in color, and stiff, and will not stick to the paper like seaweed, but has to be gummed or otherwise fastened. The beautiful pink coralline that you gather in the rock pools or on shells was once the home of thousands.
 Little and harmless and weed-like as they look, some of them are well pro- vided with weapons. The feathery one I spoke of has been carefully studied through a microscope. and it is discovered that each tiny dot of a polyp (these little fellows are polyps) has lance, or a dart, or whatever you may call it-a long, elastic thread, very strong, that usually lies coiled up in his cell, but which he can throw with great force. It is armed with barbs, and it in some way poisons any little creature it touches. So it isn't so innocent bit of seaweed as it looks. It is true wreck, not of one, but of thousands-a ruined polyp city, in fact, or what the books call Polypidom.
 Sometimes, among all these cities, you will find one little fellow that lives in his cunning shell house all alone. It is about the size of pins head--a minute tube coiled up tightly and fast ened to a seaweed. The owner, when alive, was worm-like creature with an elegant flower-like head, and cork-shaped door to keep out enemies. Its name was Spirorbis. OIiUe ThOrre Miller, i1 ChTiStid71 U7lio71.