LITERARY WORK IN DEVONSHIRE, 289 



case was one which I could share, and we were happy so 

 long as no stranger intermeddled with our joy. But the 

 discovery of some other collector installed on our hunting- 

 field, or the advent of anybody to disturb us, was sufficient 

 to throw a cloud over everything. If we could not escape, 

 if we pushed on in vain into a district of wilder and more 

 slippery rocks and deeper pools, if the unconscious enemy 

 persisted in dogging our footsteps, then the spell was 

 broken, and home we trudged with empty jars, or with a 

 harvest but half garnered. 



Most interesting of all were the dredging excursions in 

 Tor Bay, but my memories of them are much more frag- 

 mentary. These were frequent through the course of 1858, 

 but after that year my father scarcely ever ventured on the 

 water. During that last season, Charles Kingsley was 

 several times our companion. The naturalists would hire 

 a small trawler, and work up and down, generally in the 

 southern part of the bay, just outside a line drawn north 

 and south, between Hope's Nose and Berry Head. I think 

 that Kingsley was a good sailor ; my father was a very 

 indifferent one, and so was I ; but when the trawl came up, 

 and the multitudinous population of the bottom of the 

 bay was tossed in confusion before our eyes, we forgot our 

 qualms in our excitement. I still see the hawk's eyes of 

 Kingsley peering into the trawl on one side, my father's 

 wide face and long set mouth bent upon the other. I well 

 recollect the occasion (my father's diary gives me the date, 

 August II, 1858) when, in about twenty fathoms outside 

 Berry Head, we hauled up the first specimen ever observed 

 of that exquisite creature, the diadem anemone, Bunodes 

 coronata ; its orange-scarlet body clasping the whorls of a 

 living Ttirritella shell, while it held in the air its purple 

 parapet crowned with snow-white spiky tentacles. 



When the bi-monthly parts were bound up, the Acii- 



U 



