256 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



I may have to speak hereafter ; meanwhile let us ad- 

 mire the various colours of its cloak, and the delicate 

 beauty of its frilled branchiae, for there is nothing in 

 its general demeanour to admire. It has no pretty 

 ways to captivate our hearts — a mere drawing-room 

 beauty, large, lazy, lymphatic, and unintellectual. This 

 other Doris has not even brilliant colours to attract 

 notice : a dirty white cloak is thrown over its person, 

 which, except the delicate gill-tuft, has really nothing 

 to boast of. But as Falstaff consoled himself with the 

 thought that his ragged troop were " mortal men, food 

 for powder/' and as good for bullets as a troop of 

 better men, so I estimate this Doris with an anatomi- 

 cal eye, and find it worth attention. The Eolids are 

 poorly represented here — only two, E. Papillosa and 

 one E. Alba ; but there happen to be abundant speci- 

 mens of the Fleurohranchus (see Plate VII., fig. 3), a 

 naked mollusc of translucent buff colour, which on the 

 rocks at first I mistook for a Doris, but found on in- 

 spection could not be one ; and recourse to Wood- 

 ward's MoUusca, and Gosse's Handbook, at length 

 satisfied me of its title and position. This animal 

 wears his gill drooping from his side, under the cloak, 

 with the jauntiness of an ostrich feather drooping 

 from the side of a lady's hat ; and instead of carrying 

 his shell like a breastplate or backplate, he wears it 

 beneath his skin, as timorous tyrants used to wear 

 mail beneath their clothes. The Fleurobranchus was 

 a novelty to me, and when the fisherman who accom- 

 panied me, to turn over the stones, first pushed aside 



