246 LOCH C RE RAN. 



moors, on which special classes of animals have a wide 

 range, while others are wholly local and strangely limited 

 in habitat. A small species of this same Astarte, A. 

 compressa, with numerous very graceful lines upon it, 

 is so comparatively rare that we have only procured two 

 specimens in our extensive dredging in our own loch. 

 Suddenly we come upon their haunt, and a dozen or two 

 are procured in Loch Etive in a single haul ! 



As we gather our treasures in the evening in our snug 

 retreat on the hill, amid sympathetic and all-enduring 

 onlookers, f we find the fragments of a pennahtla, or sea 

 pea, with its myriad polyps still capable of expansion, 

 although the stem has been broken into fragments. 

 Into the porcelain dish that the sun artist has graciously 

 loaned we toss a few sea slugs or sea cucumbers, whose 

 uncouth, snail-like form is sufficiently forbidding. When 

 morning dawns, what a contrast they form to their even- 

 ing appearance ! The one has thrown out a splendid set 

 of crimson suckers, beautiful in colour, arrangement, and 

 form ; the other large fellow has spread his delicate, 

 almost transparent, tentacles tastefully divided at the 

 extremities far across the dish in search of food ; while 

 the little hermit crab that had chosen the summit of the 

 sluggish creature as a point of vantage the evening before, 

 had evidently thought better of it, and was racing with 

 incessant and by no means intelligent activity around the 

 dish again and again. These Holothuroids are very 

 interesting marine forms, and will repay any one who 

 can overcome his repugnance to their slug-like appear- 

 ance, which is soon lost sight of in the beauty of their 

 expanded crowns. 



About 6.15 on Sunday the i2th we witnessed a 

 really remarkable display of aurora borealis. Not only 



