1 68 The Ottawa Naturalist [October 



Our Atlantic waters, it cannot be doubted, abound with 

 animal life, indeed in some localities there is a plethora which is 

 almost incredible. Those naturalists who were privileged to 

 pursue researches in the new marine station at St. Andrews, dur- 

 ing' the two seasons when it was located there, were familiar with the 

 spectacle which Dr. Whiteaves describes in a passage from Dr. 

 Stimpson on p. 44. The large reddish or blackish purple sea- 

 cucumbers, resembling the garden vegetable in shape, but soft, 

 i-limy and elastic to the touch, were so abundant that the dredge 

 often came up heavy and packed tight with their plump and 

 writhing bodies. Considerable areas in the waters of Passama- 

 quoddy Bay are indeed black with the crowded assemblages of 

 these curious Echinoderms. The delicacy so much coveted by the 

 Chinese called '' trepang'' is really the dried and prepared bodies 

 of these interesting animals. In our utilitarian age a catalogue 

 such as this may even stir some enterprising business man to 

 create a " trepang" industry on the Atlantic coast. Hyrtl it was 

 who showed a visitor a stained section of a kidney under the 

 microscope, and the visitor straightway designed an attractive 

 wall-paper based on the stained histological section shown to him. 

 Dr. Whiteaves need not be alarmed if, while his valuable cata- 

 logue is of infinite worth to his brother scientists, it prove also an 

 incentive to a new fishery enterprise ! In contrast with the large 

 fleshy Pentacta frondosa is the small delicate and transparent 

 Pentacta mimita of Verril, a species first distinguished as Cucu- 

 viaria mimiia by Otto Fabricius in 1780, but which there is every 

 reason to believe, now, is the small immature stage of /*. frondosa. 

 Dr. Martin Duncan and Mr. Sladen suggested this, as Dr. 

 Whiteaves mentions on page 44, and the numerous specimens ex- 

 amined alive at St. Andrews in 1899 and 1900 support the 

 suggestion. The curious " Sea Orange," Lophothiiria 

 Fabricii, Duben and Koren, a congener of the sea- 

 cucumbers, is recorded by Dr. Whiteaves as occurring all the way 

 from Grand Manan to Temple Bay in Labrador. Its somewhat 

 flattened shape, (not unlike a small shoe with the opening for the 

 foot closed up) and covered with dense overlapping scales, ren- 

 ders it one of the most peculiar of littoral prizes; but it is strange 



