96 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



dozen Terebellae, an Ascidian of exquisite colour, in- 

 numerable Serpulae, and a beautiful Sabella. 



" Stop ! what is that you're going to throw away ? " 



" Only a bit of dirt, sir." 



" Let me see it. I have known bits of dirt turn out 

 to be curious animals.'' 



Jack, now fairly bewildered, and expecting probably 

 that the next thing he will be asked to hand me will 

 be a bubble of foam, stretches out his honest fist, and 

 places on the seat a small lump of sand, having no 

 definite shape, and looking no more like an animated 

 creature than the mud-pie which ingenious youth 

 delights to construct. I know it at a glance to be an 

 Ascidian {Molgula arenosa), for only last week, while 

 scrambling over the rocks, I looked into a shallow pool, 

 on the sandy bottom of which there was one of these 

 sand-lumps alone in its glory. I cannot tell what made 

 me suspect it to be an animal. The mind sees what 

 the eye cannot. Do we not distinguish a friend by a 

 certain undefinable something long before he is near 

 enouoh for us to distinojuish his dress or his features ? 

 With the same mental perception one learns to dis- 

 tinguish an animal, even when one has never seen it 

 before. I had never seen or read of this Ascidian. I 

 did not know it to be an Ascidian ; but, detaching it 

 from the rock, I popped it in my bottle, convinced 

 that it was an animal of some kind ; and on coming 

 home, I began to scrape away the sand till I came 

 down to a membrane. I then cut the mass open, and 

 found an Ascidian, which had so completely coated 



