FOUR- ANGLED SQUIRTER. 307 



an animal at all, if uninitiated ; but might readily pass 

 it over as a rude stone, or a bit of wood roughly bruised 

 and worn by the waves beating it among the rocks, so 

 uncouth and coarse and shapeless it is. It forms a great 

 mass, some two inches high, rudely four-sided, of a dull 

 yellowish -olive hue, rising into two blunt eminences, 

 which individually retain the quadrangular shape, and 

 in activity open by symmetrically quadrangular ori- 

 fices. It is a sluggish, unattractive lump of flesh, some- 

 what between leather and jelly in texture, coarsely 

 pellucid, but not transparent, and its exterior is usually 

 distinguished by various extraneous matters imbedded 

 in the test, as well as by forests of tangled zoophytes 

 which creep over it and root in it as on the rock. The 

 surface itself, moreover, is much corrugated by an irre- 

 gular network of depressions, marking off angular warty 

 areas. 



On the other hand, the little Currant is a pleasing 

 inhabitant of the aquarium. Of manners, to be sure, it 

 has not much, good or bad, but the form and colour 

 are agreeable; as is also the effect produced by the 

 grouping of the brilliant drops of jelly. Little of change 

 takes place, beyond the occasional contraction and re- 

 protrusion of the orifices ; but sometimes you may see, 

 as I have seen, at certain times, the laying of eggs by 

 this species, which is an interesting phenomenon. These 



