THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 189 
as fantastic as those of the tropics, animals whose 
shapes outvie the wildest dreams of the old German 
ghost painters which cover the walls of the galleries 
of Brussels or Antwerp? And yet the uncouthest 
has some quaint beauty of its own, while most—the 
star-fishes and anemones, for example—are nothing 
but beauty. The brilliant plates in Mr. Gosse’s 
« Aquarium ” give, after all, but a meagre picture of 
the reality, as it may be seen in the tank-house 
at the Zoological Gardens; and as it may be seen ~ 
also, by anyone who will follow carefully the direc- 
tions given at the end of his book, stock a glass 
vase with such common things as he may find 
in an hour’s search at low tide, and so have an 
opportunity of seeing how truly Mr. Gosse says, 
in his valuable preface, that— 
“The habits” (and he might well have added, the 
marvellous beauty) “of animals will never be tho- 
roughly known till they are observed in detail. Nor 
is it sufficient to mark them with attention now and 
then ; they must be closely watched, their various 
actions carefully noted, their behaviour under dif- 
