iS2 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



rosy-tipped tentacles, Anthea cereus ; and that ends 

 the list. Let us reckon up the number of the 

 various classes, genera, and species of aquatic 

 creatures we have secured. Of Fishes, 23 ; of 

 Crustacea (including the Isopoda),19; of Mollusca, 

 G ; of Molluscoida, 4 ; of Actinia, 1 : grand total, 

 53. What a collection ! 



We could not attempt to catalogue the endless 

 annelids great and small, the polyzoa and hydrozoa, 

 and all manner of zoa found amongst the weed, 

 which have added a dozen new slides at least to the 

 microscopic cabinet in the Haslar Museum : we 

 have an idea that sundry starfishes, oysters, mussels, 

 whelks, &c, ought to have figured in our list; 

 which, with the exception of these omissions, is a 

 bond fide list of the spoils we sorted out after a trip, 

 and not a spurious concatenation of things (that it 

 might be possible to catch) compiled from a Cyclo- 

 paedia. 



The time, labour, and expense of these little ex- 

 peditions are too often thrown away for want of a 

 little common care and foresight ; the young natu- 

 ralist is apt to trust to the boatman " to find some- 

 thing to put the things in," and "the things" get 

 put into the fisherman's bucket, and if the latter is 

 not capsized by a lurch, it gets put in the hot sun : 

 the little fishes in their struggles get stuck into the 

 gasping throats and gills of the big fishes, who are 

 stifled and poisoned with heat and overcrowding. 

 If these catastrophes are avoided, the mate or the 

 boy is promised an extra sixpence " to carry them 

 up to the house " ; and as the smack has to be 

 moored, and all the gear made safe and snug, a long 

 time elapses before the toil-earned specimens arrive, 

 when probably all that have not been lost by the 

 slopping-over of the bucket en route, have been 

 effectually suffocated by the shaking and jolting, 

 and many are not only dead, but torn and mashed 

 and spoiled ; if any have survived, the chances are 

 there is no clean cool sea- water to put them into, 

 and they soon go the way of the rest ; next morning 

 they offend somebody's olfactories, nobody knows 

 how to preserve them ; and like the proverbial salt 

 that hath lost its savour, they are cast upon the 

 dunghill. "Tabby Tom" from next-door, soon 

 "winds" them, and scrambling over the wall, com- 

 mits suicide by filling his belly with the sharp 

 spines of the Acanthoptenjgii, or the still more 

 fatal spines of a starfish : there is a terrible 

 caterwauling over his mortal remains, first by the 

 tight-laced Spinsters, his Mistresses, who bring 

 a charge of arsenic and malice prepense ; and 

 secondly, by his feline mistresses, whose unearthly 

 screams and wailings on the tiles make midnight 

 horrible. 



If a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing 

 well, and a little prevision and provision are neces- 

 sary to secure success. Before we set out, we take 

 care to have two or three large clean glazed earthen 



footpans and flat shallow milkpans well scalded out, 

 and then filled with clean sea- water ; and we take 

 with us, besides the bottles and jars for little things, 

 two or more big unpainted iron garden watering- 

 pots, also carefully scalded out, and an old rug to 

 spread above them tent-fashion when the sun is up; 

 we take care to put them in a safe place in the boat, 

 and lash them so that they can't be upset ; before 

 the first haul we half fill them from alongside, and 

 from time to time we add water, and if we are out 

 long, we now and then pour off part of the old and 

 effete fluid, and fill up again afresh : these cans are 

 easily carried by a man with a milkman's yoke, or 

 they will ride in a cab, and do not in either case 

 slop over, On our return home the living things are 

 at once lifted out with a net into the cool clean 

 water in the open airy pans, there to await our 

 final disposal. Creatures that are to be removed 

 ultimately to the permanent aquarium require to be 

 gradually acclimatized ; they are apt to go wrong if 

 plunged at once into a long- established colony. 

 Throw away the water that has come home in the 

 cans ; its oxygen has been exhausted ; it is all hot 

 and muddled, and foul with the vomitings of the 

 crowded prisoners ; it would poison Beelzebub ; 

 throw it away. 



Fishes that have to be preserved in a rough-and- 

 ready way for future reference and examination, 

 may be put just as they are, into a confectioner's 

 show-glass filled with common methylated spirit ; 

 in about a week the mucus and other impurities 

 will have settled to the bottom in fiocculent masses, 

 the super-natant spirit will be as clear as water : 

 then lift each one carefully out and wipe it gently 

 over with a soft sponge moistened with spirits 

 of ammonia, which will completely free it from 

 slime and brighten it up ; then place it in fresh 

 methylated spirit, either in a show-glass or in a 

 proper " specimen glass " with a ground-glass 

 stopper. The fewer that are put into the same 

 jar the better; but we have thirty fishes and an 

 infinity of crustaceans in one single jar, in which 

 they have remained without deterioration for three 

 years. 



Those who wish to make a study of our Fishes, 

 will do well to procure YarrelFs " British Fishes " ; 

 Couch's "Fishes of the British Islands"; Cuvier 

 and Valencieuue's "Histoire Naturelle des Pois- 

 sons," and to hunt out the papers by Dr. Giinther 

 and others in " Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist." Bertram's 

 "Harvest of the Sea" is an interesting book ; and 

 to unpretending people, who are not ashamed to be 

 seen referring to a handbook when out on a seaside 

 holiday, we strongly recommend Mr. Gosse's "Manual 

 of Marine Zoology." With it in their pockets they 

 can scarcely fail to identify any living thing they 

 can possibly catch on our coasts, with the Dredge, 

 the Towing-net, or the Trawl. 



Bury Cross, Gosport. 



