PROF. EDWARD FORBES AS A ZOOLOGIST 51 



and quite unconscious of its suicidal powers, I spread it 

 out on a rowing bench, the better to admire its form and 

 colours. On attempting to remove it for preservation, to 

 my horror and disappointment I found only an assemblage 

 of rejected members. My conservative endeavours were 

 all neutralised by its destructive exertions, and it is now 

 badly represented in my cabinet by an armless disc and a 

 discless arm. Next time I went to dredge on the same spot, 

 determined not to be cheated out of a specimen in such a 

 way a second time, I brought with me a bucket of cold fresh 

 water, to which article Starfishes have a great antipathy. 

 As I expected, a Luidia came up in the dredge, a most 

 gorgeous specimen. As it does not generally break up 

 before it is raised above the surface of the sea, cautiously 

 and anxiously I sunk my bucket to a level with the dredge's 

 mouth and proceeded in the most gentle manner to introduce 

 Luidia to the purer element. Whether the cold air was 

 too much for him, or the sight of the bucket too terrific, I 

 know not, but in a moment he proceeded to dissolve his 

 corporation, and at every mesh of the dredge his fragments 

 were seen escaping. In despair I grasped at the largest, 

 and brought up the extremity of an arm with its terminating 

 eye, the spinous eyelid of which opened and closed with 

 something exceedingly like a wink of derision." If the genial 

 naturalist had bethought himself of the hooks of the livers 

 on such ground and of a wide-mouthed jar of spirit, the 

 captured LuidicE would have been more successfully dealt 

 with, and this without contact with aught but the hook and 

 the paralysing element. Yet his failure was balanced by his 

 inimitable description of it. 



No work of Edward Forbes is more cherished by marine 

 zoologists than his Naked-eyed Medtisce} and this though at 

 that date (1848) the connection of many of the beautiful 

 forms, represented in his thirteen plates, with hydroid 

 stocks was only partially known to the author. Such a 

 connection in no way detracts from the lucid and often lively 

 descriptions of structure and habits, and the comprehensive 

 survey of the group added by way of introduction. The 



^ A monograph of the British Naked-eyed Medusae, Ray Society, 1848. 



