136 Bibliographical Notices. 



peculiarities. Our thoughts turn to the sea. We hear in fancy the 

 rippling of the tide, or the swelling of the surge, and feel upon our 

 cheek its fresh and invigorating gales. We accompany the author 

 in his researches on the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland, and 

 venture with him even into the Shetland seas, where " the king of 

 the sea-cucumbers " holds his court. In by-gone times we remember 

 learning from a fragment of some old ballad, 



** The herring loves the merry moonlight, 

 The mackerel loves the wind, 

 But the oyster loves the dredging song, 

 For they come of a gentle kind." 



Mr. Forbes does not tell us if any of the creatures which he has 

 taken under his patronage partake of the penchant for the dredging 

 song, which is here attributed to the oyster. We would rather sur- 

 mise, that all which have escaped his pen and pencil are evincing 

 their determination not to permit any prying naturalist " to draw 

 their frailties from their dread abode," for we believe that the re- 

 searches of succeeding naturalists have not as yet added even one 

 species of Echinodermata to those which Mr. Forbes has recorded. 



In other departments of zoology, traditionary lore and superstitious 

 feelings have made certain animals be regarded with some degree of 

 reverence, or avoided with some infusion of awe. It is curious to 

 find, that even to the Radiate animals, though so low in the scale of 

 being, something of the same kind of superstitious dread has been 

 extended. Thus we are told, — 



" The Common Brittle-star often congregates in great numbers on the 

 edges of scallop-banks, and I have seen a large dredge come up completely 

 filled with them; a most curious sight, for when the dredge was emptied, 

 these little creatures, writhing with the strangest contortions, crept about in 

 all directions, often flinging their arms in broken pieces around them, and 

 their snake-like and threatening attitudes were by no means relished by the 

 boatmen, who anxiously asked permission to shovel them overboard, super- 

 stitionsly remarking that ' the things weren't altogether right.' " 



The great Sea-Cucumber, we are told, is by the Shetland fisher- 

 men arranged 



" in an extensive though most unphilosophically constituted class of ma- 

 rine animals, to which they apply the term * Pushen,' which being trans- 

 lated signifies poison. In this Thulean arrangement numbers of the rarest 

 of British animals are unfortunately included, — I say unfortunately, for all 

 members of the class Pushen are unceremoniously and speedily thrust over- 

 board almost as soon as seen in the fishing-boats, being considered unlucky 

 and dangerous in their nature." 



The author elsewhere says, in speaking of the common Cross-fish 

 (Uraster rubens), — 



" Dr. J. L. Drummond of Belfast favours me with the following note on 

 their Irish denomination : — ' The Starfishes are called at Bangor (county 

 Down) the Devils fingers, and the Devil's hands, and the children have a 

 superstitious dread of touching them. When drying some in the little gar- 

 den behind my lodgings, I heard some of them on the other side of the 

 hedge put the following queries: — ' What's the gentleman doing with the 

 bad man's hand ? Is he ganging to eat the bad man's hands, do ye think?' " 



