242 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



a casual glance of admiration. Of that magnificent Boris 

 tuberculata, I may have to speak hereafter ; meanwhile let 

 us admire the various colours of its cloak, and the delicate 

 beauty of its frilled branchiae, for there is nothing in its gen- 

 eral demeanour to admire. It has no pretty ways to capti- 

 vate our hearts — a mere drawing-room beauty, large, lazy, 

 lymphatic, and unintellectual. This other Doris has not even 

 brilliant colours to attract notice : a dirty white cloak is 

 thrown over its person, which, except the delicate gill-tuft, 

 has really nothing to boast of But as Falstaff consoled himself 

 with the thought that his ragged troop were "mortal men, 

 food for powder," and as good for bullets as a troop of better 

 men, so I estimate this Doris with an anatomical eye, and 

 find it worth attention. The Eolids are poorly represented 

 here — only two E. Papillosa, and one E. Alba ; but there 

 happen to be abundant specimens of the Pleurohranchus 

 (see Plate VII., fig. 3), a naked mollusc of translucent buff 

 colour, which on the rocks at first I mistook for a Doris, 

 but found on inspection could not be one ; and recourse to 

 "Woodward's Mollusca, and Gosse's Handbook, at length 

 satisfied me of its title and position. This animal wears his 

 gni drooping from his side, under the cloak, with the jaunti- 

 ness of an ostrich feather drooping from the side of a lady's 

 hat ; and instead of carrying his shell like a breastplate, 

 or backplate, he wears it beneath his skin, as timorous 

 tyi'ants used to wear mail beneath their clothes. The Pleuro- 

 branchus was a novelty to me, and when the fisherman who 

 accompanied me, to turn over the stones, first pushed aside 

 the stone under wliich it crawled, I expressed my enthusiasm 



