THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 75 
expand into a delicate compound flower, which can 
neither be described nor painted, of long pellucid 
tentacles, hanging like a thin bluish cloud over a 
disk of mottled brown and grey. 
Here, adhering to this large whelk, is another, 
but far larger and coarser. It is Sagartia parasitica, 
one of our largest British species; and most sin- 
gular in this, that it is almost always (in Torbay, 
at least,) found adhering to a whelk: but never to 
a live one; and for this reason. The live whelk 
(as you may see for yourself when the tide is out) 
burrows in the sand in chase of hapless bivalve 
shells, whom he bores through with his sharp 
tongue (always, cunning fellow, close to the hinge, 
where the fish is), and then sucks out their life. 
Now, if the anemone stuck to him, it would be 
carried under the sand daily, to its own disgust. 
It prefers, therefore, the dead whelk, inhabited by 
a soldier crab, Pagurus Bernhardi (Pl. II. Fig. 2), 
of which you may find a dozen anywhere as the 
tide goes out; and travels about at the crab’s 
expense, sharing with him the offal which is his 
