A NATURALIST S DRAWING-ROOM. 47 



stone more conveniently there, poking a sluggish Doris 

 (Plate 11, fig. 2), to assure myself that he is alive, 

 rescuing an Actinia from the crowding propensities of 

 its cousins, or — sadder office still! — discovering: and 

 removing those of my pets who have been inconsider- 

 ate enough to pay their debt to nature's laws. This 

 removal is a very necessary bit of work, for these 

 amiable creatures, when dead, are capable of stinking 

 Avith some vigour, and corrupting the water in which 

 their companions live. Breakfast was always ready 

 before I had fairly finished my overseeing, for the par- 

 ishes were numerous, and some of the parishioners apt 

 to skulk out of sight. During the pleasant hour of 

 breakfast, and the cigar which followed, I contemplated 

 my treasures with a placid eye. Picture to yourself a 

 large and airy room, made out of two, in an elegant 

 villa : on the sideboard stand four or five glass vases, 

 various in size and in contents ; from this the eye 

 travels to a table, opposite the window which opens 

 on a balcony sheltered by a verandah ; this table is 

 covered with bottles, phials, troughs, microscope, dis- 

 secting-case, note-book, &c., all in that state of imper- 

 fect order denominated higgledy-piggledy. Three soup- 

 plates occupy the extreme end of the table, and, "carry 

 the eye" into the balcony, where three yellow earthen- 

 ware pans and a white foot-pan mimic, tant Men que 

 mal, the shallow rock-pools of the shore. If the eye 

 so carried into the balcony happen to be in the least a 

 conventional eye — one never so well pleased as when 

 resting on the elegancies of surface civilisation — it is 



