its coils, when I perceived that the animal had twisted itself around a bundle of its eggs, holding them fast in a close embrace.  In the process of unwinding, the eggs dropped away and floated to a little distance.  Having finally stretched it out to its full length, perhaps half a yard, I sat watching to see if this singular being that looked like a long black thread in the water would give any signs of life.  Almost immediately it moved towards the bundle of eggs, and, having reached it, began to sew itself through and through the little white mass, passing one end of its body through it, and then returning to make another stitch, as it were, till the eggs were at last completely entangled again in an intricate net-work of coils.  It seemed to me almost impossible that this care of copying could be the result of any instinct of affection in a creature of so low an organization, and I again separated it from the eggs, and placed them at a greater distance, when the same action was repeated.  On trying the experiment a third time, the bundle of eggs had become loosened, and a few of them dropped off singly into the water.  The efforts which the animal then made to recover the missing ones, winding itself round and round them, but failing to bring them into the fold with the rest, because they were too small, and evaded all efforts to secure them, when once parted from the first little compact mass, convinced me that there was a definite purpose in its attempts, and that even a being so low in the scale of animal existence has some dim consciousness of a relation to its offspring.  I afterwards unwound also the mass of eggs, which, when coiled up as I first saw it, made a roll of white substance about the size of a coffee-bean, and found that it consisted of a string of eggs, measuring more than twelve feet in length, the eggs being held together by some gelatinous substance that cemented them and prevented them from falling apart.  Cutting this string across, and placing a small section under the microscope, I counted on one surface of such a cut from seventy to seventy-five eggs; and estimating the entire number of eggs according to the number contained on such a surface, I found that there were not less than eight millions of eggs in the whole string.  The fertility of these lower animals is truly amazing, and is no doubt a provision of Nature against the many chances of destruction to which these germs, so delicate and often microscopically small, must be exposed.  The higher we rise in the Animal Kingdom, the more limited do we find the number of progeny, and the care bestowed upon them by the parents is in proportion to this diminution.