MARCH, 1882. 157 



and peculiarities ; gathered for their droll modes of 

 hanging on to their little world. Crabs in all sorts of 

 wonderfully ornamented shells ; and, poor fellow, are you 

 on your way to the comfortable rascal near you to beg 

 for enough to take you across the ferry ? A hermit 

 crab in a whelk shell, but such a shell ! Far too big for 

 the occupant, to start with, it is worn through in many 

 places, and covered with barnacles and serpulae. Its un- 

 covered tail shows clearly through the end, an equally 

 indecent and dangerous exposure, and its claws in vain 

 try to stop a rent half-way up towards the proper aperture. 

 You are busy ! we suppose, and object to walk home with 

 us ! Well ! if you were similarly laden, we would be 

 busy somewhere else too ! 



With the rain in absolute sheets for days, and the 

 gales continuous for weeks, the world is desperately busy 

 in spite of it all. The enemy is upon us with a rush, 

 and soon scarce a portion of the lower foreshore, and the 

 sea bottom (to a depth of one or two fathoms) but will 

 be covered with the slobbery annual melanospermous 

 seaware that we have long voted an intolerable nuisance, 

 except when expanding its filaments in a dish of water. 

 A few days has done it all, and now the foreshores are 

 rapidly covering with it, hiding everything of interest in 

 its slimy embrace. The hardest and finest ground gets 

 covered with it as surely as the muddiest, and even more 

 certainly ; so that no spat of oyster could possibly find 

 room for attachment. It is at least six weeks sooner 

 than one naturally anticipates, and so will account for 

 the non-increase of certain classes of shell fish, whose 

 embryos demand hard ground on which to attach them- 

 selves. For the growth is so rapid, and the consistence 

 so soft, of this seaweed, that no attempt to form an 



