498 THE AQUARIAN NATURALIST. 



had greater popular fame, or a worse character, than 

 the Aplysise. 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 detestation. 

 To touch them, according to European prejudices, 

 was sufficient to generate disease in the fool-hardy 

 experimenter; whilst Asiatics, reversing the conse- 

 quences, maintained, perhaps with greater truth, that 

 they met with instantaneous death when handled by 

 man. Physicians wrote treatises on the effects of 

 their poison, and discussed the remedies best adapted 

 to neutralize it. Conspirators brewed nauseous beve- 

 rages from their slimy bodies, and administered the 

 potion, confident in its deadly powers. Every nation 

 in the world on whose shores the poor Sea-hares 

 crawled, accorded to them attributes of ferocity and 

 malignant virulence ; and yet, strange to say, there 

 never appears to have been the slightest foundation 

 for a belief in their crimes. 



" The Aplysia is a perfectly harmless, gentle, timid, 

 and, if observed in its native element, beautiful animal. 

 Its odour, it is true, is sometimes not over-pleasant, 

 and, when irritated, it ejects a fluid, the vivid purple 

 hue of which may have excited alarm. Its shape, 

 wherein it resembles, more than most mollusks, the 

 body of some little quadruped, naturally attracted 

 the attention of the curious ; but why it should have 

 excited their fears, and filled with terror the muscular 

 hearts of sturdy fishermen, is a problem to be solved 

 only when the predisposing causes of groundless super- 



