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lUnims. 



A Naturalist's Rambles on the DevonsJdre Coast. By Philip Henrv Gosse, 

 A. L. S., Author of "The Ocean/' "A Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica/' 

 etc. London: John Van Voorst, 1853. p. p. 4ol. Numerous Engravings. 



A compulsory residence in Devonshire for the recovery of health was turned 

 to good account by Mr. Gosse, in the production of this extremely interesting 

 and useful volume, and which will, we trust, lead many to the study of the 

 numerous wonderful and elegant forms that are to be met with on every coast. 



The author does not profess to give a book of Systematic Zoology, but 

 rather the somewhat desultory observations suggested by objects as they pre- 

 sented themselves to his view; and he has done this in an extremely interesting 

 and useful way. Having a good achromatic microscope with him, he has 

 brought it to bear with admirable effect on the minute creatures which abound 

 on all our shores. Many of these he has followed through all their stages 

 of growth, and in doing so has added largely to the general stock of know- 

 ledge. As an example of the style and value of the book we may take the 

 following: METAMORPHOSIS OF LEPllALIA. 



June Wth. — I detached a minute atom of a red colour swimming rapidly in gyrations in the 

 water in which were fragments of polypiferous rock. I caught it with a tube and examined it. 

 It was a globose, or rather semi-elliptical body, of a soft consistence, covered on its whole 

 surface with strong bristly cilia, in rapid vibration. Near the rounder end was evidently an 

 orifice with amorphous lips; and when the globule was submitted to slight pressure, just sufficient 

 to confine it, it made great efforts to get away by slightly lengthening itself, and drawing in the 

 sides around this mouth, which was in a manner protruded forcibly and repeatedly. Presently 

 on the restraint being continued, the globule threw out from different parts of its periphery, 

 long lancet-like flexible pointed bristles twice as long as the cilia, with which it pushed hei"e 

 and there. These lancets I perceived were ordinarily bent at an acute angle near their base, 

 so as to lie flat on the body unperoeived; and I think there were many of them, for I fancied 



1 saw the minute basal parts of many that were so concealed. Those that were e.Kposed were 

 ever and anon suddenly bent up again and so concealed, and again protruded. After examining 

 it awhile, I carefully put it without injury into a glass of sea-water alone. Its diameter was 

 about one hundred and tenth of an inch. (See Plate XIII., Fig. 1.) 



I afterwards saw another in the original vessel, and both this and the former had the habit 

 of coming into contact with the side of the vessel, and continuing in one spot for a considerable 

 while, (half an hour or more,) not moving a hair's breadth from the place, and yet evidently 

 not adhering, because gyrating uniformly all the time by the ciliary action. One of these I 

 lost, and the one that I isolated got into a corner of the cell, and decayed. But carefully 

 looking at the original vessel, I found some half-a-dozen scattered over the sides, but in a more 

 advanced condition. These were all firmly adhering to the glass, and that so inseparably that 

 the most careful touch of a pin's point to detach one, tore it into a shapeless mass of broken 

 flesh. The youngest of these had taken the form of a flattened oval, or long hexagon, with 

 one end more pointed than the other, in which the redness was curdling and separating into 

 masses. The others showed eight points budding from the more acute end; and in one the 

 most advanced, these were already produced into eight slender spines, set around the end like 

 the teeth of a comb, and slightly divergent. In this the general hue was a pale pellucid flesh- 

 colour; and an opaque band of deep red was arranged in a horse -shoe form around the end 

 opposite the spines. (See Fig. 2.) 



During the next day little change took place, except the lengthening of the spines; but by 

 the following evening, forty-eight houi-s after I had observed it in the state just described, (Fig. 



2 ,) it had made important advances. The spines, without increasing in thickness, had shot out, 



