NEW OCCUPATION. 15U 



what we valued far more some of his own deep acquaintance 

 with their habits and economy. Then it was that we first 

 learned the remarkable facts related above, and saw with won- 

 dering eyes the bright orange-coloured ova packed away in 

 triple rows in the pouch of the male fish. Thus we bartered our 

 Pipe-fish, esteeming ourselves richly rewarded by the strange 

 and wonderful history we had had in exchange. But what was 

 our astonishment some months after this, to receive from our sage 

 instructor a handsome little volume he had just published on the 

 natural history of the neighbourhood, in which, when speaking 

 of the Pipe-fish, he referred at length to our gift in a paragraph 

 beginning as follows : " I have a pair of these fish, presented 

 me by my young friend Mr. (and here our name was given at 

 full length, imprint too, and with such a prefix), taken in," &c. &c. 

 It may be a weakness of ours, but from that time forward we 

 always looked upon the little Worm-shaped Pipe-fish as a de- 

 cidedly handsome fellow. 



One of the most conspicuous results of the popularity of the 

 Aquarium is the impetus it has given to the study of seaside 

 natural history. People have become so pleased with what they 

 have seen of the indoor life of Periwinkles, Prawns, and Sea- 

 Anemones, that they are now bent on cultivating an acquaint- 

 ance with them in their own proper homes, in the rock-clefts and 

 tide-pools along the shore. The consequence is, that quite a 

 new element has been introduced into the occupation of the 

 visitors to our fashionable watering-places. There are the same 

 groups of listless dawdlers along the sands, the same boating 

 parties, donkey-drivers, absorbed readers, and enthusiastic young 

 ladies in rapt admiration of " the deep and dark blue ocean," as 

 of yore ; but, in addition to these, there is now another class of 

 visitors, carefully studious of spring-tides and the exact time of 

 low water, whose talk is of " Trogs " and " Gems," Balani and 

 Serpulce, who affect hobnailed boots, dresses that won't spoil, 

 and collecting baskets stored with jam-pots and wide-mouthed 

 doctors' phials, and whom you may see corning landwards with 

 every advancing tide, wet and soppy, and with a saline odour 

 about them, as though they were themselves but metamorphosed 

 sea-monsters of some sort just advanced to the human form, and 

 now first emerging from the deep. 



But let no precise, well-dressed individual think to abash 



