at 
four inches high of living ross. I was much surprised 
to see it, as I was not aware that the building operation 
-was so rapid that the foundation could be laid on a 
moving object, and a building so high erected so 
quickly. The large crass anemones are also very much 
more numerous. In fact the whole shore has awakened 
in a most surprising manner. Why it should be so, 
what the connection is between mussels and annelids, 
I cannot make out; the fish are accounted for by the 
abundant supply of food. I presume the mussels and 
worms are accounted for by the same conditions suit- 
ing both; but what are these? ‘Heat and tran- 
quility,’’ so good for oysters, won’t do here, for last 
year there was neither, Again, the mussels are 
thickest and largest where the rush of tide is strongest. 
This year, though so very much warmer and calmer, 
does not appear to have yielded any fall of mussel spat 
worth naming.” 
-The year following I went again, and found the same state 
of things, but Dame Nature discovered that even all her 
ordinary destructive forces were not sufficient to keep the 
mussels in check. They had accumulated to a foot and a 
half to two feet thick in some places, so she called the tides 
to work, lifted them bodily, hundreds and thousands of tons, 
and threw them into the channel, washing them away to 
sea. This was the time referred to by some of the wit- 
nesses at the Preston enquiry, when they said eighteen or 
twenty boats from Morecambe, in addition to the Fleetwood 
boats, were gathering mussels, and gathering them so 
