18 TEANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



of schemes of decoration. Some simple artistic designs, 

 applied in co-operation, mider the direction of the teacher, 

 might convert our wide expanses of whitewashed walls in 

 the rooms, and the broad yellow planks between and 

 around our sleeping bunks, into things of beauty, which 

 would be a joy for ever to the sojourning biologists, and a 

 constant reminder that there is something else in the 

 world besides science, and another side to nature from 

 the one they are especially observing in the field and in 

 the laboratory. We have made a feeble beginning by 

 cutting our initials on the front of the bunks we usually 

 occupy, and by labelling the head planks with their official 

 designations, such as "hon. treasurer's bimk ; " but there 

 is still abundant opportunity for further decoration. 



One of the most interesting animals obtained this time 

 was the sea slug Dendrojiotus arhorescens of which a 

 specimen was dredged in the channel about a quarter of a 

 mile off the south-west end of the island. This animal is 

 not uncommon at many places round our coast, but the 

 special interest of this particular one is as follows : — Until 

 lately Dendronotus has not been found anywhere near 

 Puffin. Five years careful shore-collecting and dredging 

 in the neighbourhood failed to turn up a single specimen. 

 At Hilbre Island, on the other hand, this magnificent sea 

 slug is abundant, and forms one of the most characteristic 

 features of the fauna. With the view of introducing this, 

 which is certainly the finest of our British nudibranchs, at 

 Puffin two separate batches were taken down alive from 

 Hilbre in September, 1888, and were set free at low tide 

 on the South Spit. They had disappeared before the next 

 tide, and all further search for them or their progeny, both 

 by sea and shore, during the following two years was 

 fruitless, and we were beginning to think that the experi- 

 ment had failed. During the " Hyyena " cruise of last 



