384 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



frivolous curiosity as to the being who can illogically 

 offer salt to him who lives in salt water ; and he likes 

 your appearance so little, that one glance is enough — 

 he is off again like a shot. Two of them comported 

 themselves in a very singular manner. They came to 

 the opening, and defiantly throwing their heads at our 

 feet, retired again in haste. Did they imagine we 

 should be satisfied with such an offering ? I picked up 

 their heads, and moralised. 



There is something irresistibly ludicrous in grave 

 men stooping over a hole — their coat-tails pendant in 

 the water, their breath suspended, one hand holding salt, 

 the other alert to clutch the victim — watching the per- 

 turbations of the sand, like hungry cats beside the holes 

 of mice ; and there is something very absurd in the as- 

 pect of the queer Solen, poking up his inquisitive person; 

 though luhi/he is thus lured by tlie salt, I cannot guess. 

 That he does not like the salt, is pretty certain, from 

 his spontaneous decapitation under the infliction ;* but 

 why this should lure him is not intelligible. In con- 

 clusion, let me notice a passage in Mr Woodward's 

 book, which not only contains an error, but implies that 

 the salting mode of capture is not known even to well- 

 informed naturalists. " Professor E. Forbes,'' he says, 

 " has immortalised the sagacity of the razor-fish, who 

 submits to be salted in his hole, rather than expose 



* Strictly speaking, the Solen has no head at all. What is called the 

 head, in the text, is simply the siphonal tubes, which are formed of 

 muscular rings, placed longitudinally. In dissecting the Solen I foxmd 

 these rings spontaneously separate themselves in the water. 



