ECHINODEBMATA. 291 



Sea-eggs were a choice dish upon the tables of the Greeks and 

 Bomans ; they were then served up with vinegar or hydromel, with 

 the addition of mint or parsley. When Lentulus feasted the priest 

 of Mars the Flamen Martialis this formed the first dish at supper. 

 Sea-eggs also appeared at the marriage feast of the goddess Hebe. 

 " Afterwards," says the poet, " came crabs and sea-urchins, which do 

 not swim in the sea, but content themselves by travelling on the sandy 

 shore." For my own part, I have only once partaken of sea-urchin, 

 and it appeared to me to be food fit for the gods ; but perhaps the 

 circumstances sufficiently explain this dash of culinary enthusiasm. 

 The Eeserve Eestaurant at Marseilles has not always been the vast 

 stone edifice we now behold, backed majestically by the mountain, and 

 fronting the sea on the promenade of the Corniche du Prado. In 

 1845 it rose quite at the entrance of the port, a small glass cage, 

 suspended as it were by a magic thread between the heavens and the 

 sea. From this aerial dwelling, overhanging with unheard-of audacity 

 the waters which surrounded it on all sides, we gazed on the most 

 wonderful prospect in the world, and reposed ourselves while enjoying 

 this intoxicating scene, during which the ships were continually enter- 

 ing the port, passing under our very feet. It was in this enchanted 

 palace that sea-urchins were served up, supported by the traditional 

 bouillabaise. 



As I have said, it appeared to me delicious. Was it the Provenfal 

 dish, the savoury bouillabaise, which contributed to my appreciation 

 of the humble sea-urchin of the Mediterranean ? Was not the 

 marvellous view which I enjoyed from the heights of my empyreum of 

 glass the indirect cause of it ? This is a tender and charming problem 

 which I love to leave floating in the clouds, half evanescent, of my 

 youthful recollections. 



HOLOTHUEIA. 



The ignorant, like you and I, call the Holothuria the Cornechou, 

 or Sea-cucumber, and perhaps, for two reasons, they are not far 

 wrong. The term sea-cucumber expresses with wonderful exactness 

 the shape of the animal, and its habitation, the sea ; and, again, it 

 would puzzle the most learned to explain the word Holothuria. The 

 body of this strange creature presents the form of an elongated and 



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