AUGUST, 1882. 217 



When out with our boat the other evening the sea was 

 calm as glass, for a marvel this summer : and all about, 

 even in the course of the swift current, patches of slaty 

 gravel were floating on the surface of the water ! The 

 slightest splash at once sent them to the bottom, but the 

 small stones of which they were composed were some- 

 times as large as the thumb nail, and the patches from 

 the size of a hand to that of a hat. The tide was rising, 

 and they must have been floated off the beach by the 

 gently rising water, so quietly that the layer of air between 

 the gravel and the water would not be moved. The 

 phenomenon was a most interesting, and to us quite a 

 novel, one on such a scale. The water would be about 

 ten fathoms deep at the place, and our best scallop ground 

 just under, so we left off agitating the water to see the 

 sudden descent of the unwonted sailors, and turned to 

 the dredge. When the first haul had been thrown into 

 the tub, what was our astonishment to find what appeared 

 to be an actual spider (Amchnida), caught by a leg, in 

 the mouth of a sea-urchin. How a land spider could 

 have got into such a corner defied us to conjecture, and 

 a sea-spider was a thing to us unknown. The specimen 

 was evidently defunct, however, and we turned to other 

 interesting contents of the dredge. Thus engaged we 

 discovered a second specimen of the same species, with 

 the soft sac-like body of the spider, quite different from 

 the plate-clad body of the small spider-crab, that is so 

 unmistakably a crustacean. This second specimen 

 proved to be alive, and we thus were apparently furnished 

 with data to show it lived at the bottom of the sea! 

 Had it not been at the bottom, how could the urchin 

 have obtained it, and did not one come up from the 

 bottom alive ? We were greatly interested, and much 



