112 GLAUCUS; OR, 
and only ask you to consider its hands, as an 
instance of that fantastic play of Nature which 
repeats, in families widely different, organs of similar 
form, though perhaps of by no means similar use; 
nay, sometimes (as in those beautiful clear-wing 
hawk-moths which you, as they hover round the 
rhododendrons, mistake for bumble-bees) repeats the 
outward form of a whole animal, for no conceivable 
reason save her—shall we not say honestly His ?— 
own good pleasure. 
But here we are at the old bank of boulders, the 
ruins of an antique pier which the monks of Tor 
Abbey built for their convenience, while Torquay 
was but a knot of fishing huts within a lonely lime- 
stone cove. To get to it, though, we have passed 
many a hidden treasure; for every ledge of these 
flat New-red-sandstone rocks, if torn up with the 
crowbar, discloses in its cracks and crannies nests 
of strange forms which shun the light of day; 
beautiful Actiniz fill the tiny caverns with living 
flowers; great Pholades (Plate X. figs. 3, 4) bore 
by hundreds in the softer strata; and wherever 
