310 PROFESSOR FORBES. 



to be near, called attention to the fact that the 

 crimson stream flowed thickest near where my foot 

 rested. 



On closely examining the spot pointed out, and 

 turning over some fronds of Dulse, we came upon a 

 small fleshy ball of a dark brown colour, from which 

 there still issued a fluid of vivid crimson hue. 

 Having placed this strange object in a bottle, I soon 

 pronounced it to be an Aplysia, with whose full- 

 length portrait, as represented in books, I had pre- 

 viously been made acquainted. 



The power which this animal possesses, under irri- 

 tation, of spurting out a peculiar secretion, I also re- 

 membered to have seen mentioned by several writers 

 on natural history. 



Although generally believed to be gentle and per- 

 fectly harmless, yet, as Professor Forbes observes, 

 few molluscs have had a worse character than the 

 Aplysiae. From very ancient times they have been 

 regarded with horror and suspicion ; and many 

 writers on natural history, conversant with them 

 only through the silly stories of ignorant fishermen, 

 have combined to hold them up as objects of detes- 

 tation. To touch them, according. to European pre- 

 judices, was sufficient to generate disease in the fool- 

 hardy experimenter; while Asiatics, reversing the 

 consequences, maintained, perhaps with greater truth, 

 that they met with instantaneous death when 

 handled by man. Physicians wrote treatises on the 



