WYVILLE THOMSON 43 



urchins of the Chalk ever seen by a scientific man (p. 155) : — 

 " This haul was not very rich, but it yielded one specimen 

 of extraordinary beauty and interest. As the dredge was 

 coming in we got a glimpse from time to time of a large 

 scarlet urchin in the bag. We thought it was one of the 

 highly coloured forms of Echinus flemingii of unusual size, 

 and as it was blowing fresh and there was some little difficulty 

 in getting the dredge capsized, we gave little heed to what 

 seemed to be an inevitable necessity — that it should be 

 crushed to pieces. We were somewhat surprised, therefore, 

 when it rolled out of the bag uninjured ; and our surprise 

 increased, and was certainly in my case mingled with a 

 certain amount of nervousness, when it settled down quietly 

 in the form of a round red cake, and began to pant— a line 

 of conduct, to say the least of it, very unusual in its rigid, 

 undemonstrative order. Yet there it was with all the 

 ordinary characters of a sea-urchin, its inter-ambulacral 

 areas, and its ambulacral areas with their rows of tube feet, 

 its spines, and five sharp blue teeth ; and curious undulations 

 were passing through its perfectly flexible leather-like test. 

 I had to summon up some resolution before taking the weird 

 little monster in my hand, and congratulating myself on the 

 most interesting addition to my favourite family which had 

 been made for many a day." ^ 



I shall quote one more description (p. 160) of a haul of a 

 dredge supplied with rope " tangles " from deep water : — 

 " I do not believe human dredger ever got such a haul. 

 The special inhabitants of that particular region — vitreous 

 sponges and echinoderms — had taken quite kindly to the 

 tangles, warping themselves into them and sticking through 

 them and over them, till the mass was such that we could 

 scarcely get it on board. Dozens of great HoUenice, like 



1 Wyville Thomson gave a detailed description of this and the 

 other new Echinoidea obtained on the " Porcupine " expeditions in 

 his Memoir, pubHshed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal 

 Society for 1874. 



