INTRODUCTION. 3 



research. Moreover, association, if not the sole 

 creator, is at least a most important factor of 

 the beautiful; and therefore the sight of one ol 

 these animals is now much more to me, in the 

 respects which we are considering, than it can be 

 to any one in whose memory it is not connected 

 with many days of that purest form of enjoy- 

 ment which cfin only be experienced in the pursuit 

 of science. 



And here I may observe that the worker in 

 marine zoology has one great advantage over his 

 other scientific brethren. Apart from the intrinsic 

 boaut}^ of most of the creatures with which he has 

 to deal, all the accompaniments of his work are 

 resthetic, and removed from those more or less 

 offensive features which cire so often necessaril}* 

 incidental to the study of anatomy and physiolog}' 

 in the higher animals. When, for instance, I con- 

 trast my oAvn work in a town laboratory on 

 vertebrated animals with that which I am now 

 about to describe upon the invertebrated in a 

 laboratory set up upon the sea-beach, it is im- 

 possible not to feel that the contrast in point of 

 enjoyment is considerable. In the latter case, a 

 summer's work resembles the pleasure-making of a 

 picnic prolonged for months, with the sense of feel-, 

 ing all the while that no time is being profitlessly 

 spent. Whether one is sailing about upon the 

 sunny sea, fishing with muslin nets for the surface 

 fauna, or steaming away far from shore to dredge 

 for othermaterial, or, again, carrying on observations 

 in the cool sea-water tanks and bell-jars of a neat 



