Publisher's Synopsis
It is perhaps not strange that the Radiates, a type of animals whose home is in the sea, many of whom are so diminutive in size, and so light and evanescent in substance, that they are hardly to be distinguished from the element in which they live, should have been among the last to attract the attention of naturalists. Neither is it surprising to those who know something of the history of these animals, that when the investigation of their structure was once begun, when some insight was gained into their complex life, their association in fixed or floating communities, their wonderful processes of development uniting the most dissimilar individuals in one and the same cycle of growth, their study should have become one of the most fascinating pursuits of modern science, and have engaged the attention of some of the most original investigators during the last half century.
