^ JELLY-FISH, STAR-FISH, AND SEA-URCHINS. 



little wooJen worksliop thrown open to the sea- 

 breezes, it alike requires some effort to persuade 

 one's self that the occupation is really something 

 more than that of finding amusement. 



It is now twelve years since I first took to this 

 kind of summer recreation, and during that time 

 most of my attention while at the seaside has been 

 devoted to the two classes of animals already men- 

 tioned — viz. the jelly-fish and star-fish, or, as 

 naturalists have named them, the Medusie and 

 Echinodermata. The present volume contains a 

 tolerably full account of the results which during 

 six of these summers I have succeeded in obtaining. 

 If any of my readers should thiidc that the harvest 

 appears to be a small one in relation to the time 

 and labour spent in gathering it, I shall feel prett}^ 

 confident that those readers are not themselves 

 working physiologists, and, therefore, that they are 

 reall}^ ignorant of the time and labovu' required to 

 devuse and execute even apparently simple experi- 

 ments, to hunt down a physiological question to 

 its only possible answer, and to verify each step in 

 the process of an experimental proof. Moreover, 

 the difficulties in all these respects are increased 

 tenfold in a seaside laboratory without adequate 

 equipments or attendance, and where, in conse- 

 quence, more time is usually lost in devising make- 

 shifts for apparatus, and teaching unskilled hands 

 how to help, than is consumed in all other parts of 

 a research. From the picnic point of view, how- 

 ever, there is no real loss in this; such incidental 

 difficulties add to the enjoyment (else why choose to 



