PRODUCE OF THE DREDGE. 91 



" Well, sir, you knows." 



And he drops it into the bucket, plunging his hands once 

 more camong the mass. That oyster, besides the Polypes 

 and Sponges gTowing on it, bore at least a dozen Terebcllas, 

 an Ascidian of exquisite colour, innumerable Serpulse, and 

 a beautiful Sabella. 



" Stop ! what is that you're going to throw away ? " 



" Only a bit of dirt, sir." 



" Let me see it. I have known bits of dirt turn out to 

 be curious animals." 



Jack, now fairly bemldered, and expecting probably that 

 the next thing he will be asked to hand me will be a bubble 

 of foam, stretches out his honest fist, and places on the seat 

 a small lump of sand, having no definite shape, and looking 

 no more like an animated creature than the mud-j)ie which 

 ingenious youth delights to constnict. I know it at a 

 glance to be an Ascidian (Molgula arenosa), for only last 

 week, while scrambling over the rocks, I looked into a 

 shallow pool, on the sandy bottom of which there was one 

 of these sand-lumps alone in its glory. I cannot tell what 

 made me suspect it to be an animal. The mind sees what 

 the eye cannot. Do we not distinguish a friend by a certain 

 undefinable something long before he is near enough for us 

 to distinguish his dress or his features ? With the same 

 mental perception one learns to distingiiish an animal, even 

 when one has never seen it before. I had never seen or read 

 of this Ascidian. I did not know it to be an Ascidian ; but, 

 detaching it from the rock, I popped it in my bottle, con- 

 vinced that it was an animal of some kind ; and on coming 



