4. JELLY-FISH, STAR-FISH, AND SEA-URCHINS,. 
little wooden workshop 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 Medusze 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 think that the harvest 
appears to be a small one in relation to the time 
and labour spent in gathering it, I shali feel pretty 
confident that those readers are not themselves 
working physiologists, and, therefore, that they are 
really ignorant of the time and labour required to 
devise 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 
