THE "WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 55 



mouths the soft sandstones and hard conglomer- 

 ates of the new red series slope down into the 

 tepid and shallow waves, affords an abundance 

 and variety of animal and vegetable life, un- 

 equalled, perhaps, in any other part of Great 

 Britain. It cannot boast, certainly, of those 

 strange deep-sea forms which Messrs. Alder. 

 Goodsir, and Laskey dredge among the lochs 

 of the western Highlands, and the sub-marine 

 mountain glens of the Zetland sea ; but it has 

 its own varieties, its own ever fresh novelties ; 

 and in spite of all the research which has been 

 lavished on its shores, a naturalist cannot now 

 work there for a winter without discoverins: forms 

 new to science, or meeting with curiosities which 

 have escaped all observers, since the lynx eye of 

 Montagu e.'^pied them full fifty years ago. 



Follow us, then, reader, in imagination, out of 

 the gay watering-placo, with its London shops 

 and London equipages, along the broad road 

 beneath the .sunny limestone clilf, tufted with 

 golden furze; past tho huge oaks and green 

 filopc.H of Tor Abbey ; and pa^t the fanta.stif 

 rocks of Livermead, scrtDjicd by the waves into 

 a labyrintii of <loiib!(; and triple caves, like Hin- 

 doo temj)Ies, ujtbornc on pillars banded with 



