DANGERS OF FEES. 243 



by at once promising him an enlarged fee — a most impolitic 

 action on my part, and one which completely unsettled my 

 companion's mind. From that moment he became a bore. 

 Every animal I condescended to bag, became the object of 

 his loudest laudations, in the dim hope that somehow he might 

 persuade me I had secured a brilliant specimen, one causing 

 fresh overflows of generosity on my part. " \Yell, he be a 

 beauty ! We arn't seen one like him before, I reckon ? He's 

 worth a sovereign, I'll bet a guinea ! " This was the running 

 accompaniment he kept up, as he handed me an Anemone 

 or a bit of Sponge. The Sponges especially alternately ex- 

 cited and damped his hopes. He was constantly exclaiming 

 " Oh ! look here, then ! what be this ? " and as constantly 

 hearing, " Only a Sponge, Pat," which greatly moderated his 

 ardour. One moment I thought he was going to persuade 

 me the Sponge was immensely valuable, but he digressed 

 into safer admiration of the Annelids just captured. In fiict, 

 as I said, my outburst had been most impolitic, by rousing 

 visions of El Dorado. From that moment his conversation 

 pointed with fatiguing monotony in the one dii'ection of 

 extra fees. The next day I took another man, and we found 

 more specimens of the Pleurobranchus than I had room 

 for. A dozen were brought home ; and as — to judge from 

 all the works accessible in Scilly — the anatomy of this mol- 

 lusc has not been studied since Meckel described it, these 

 dozen specimens will afford me ample means of investigation : 

 meanwhile, the account given by Professor Owen of the diges- 

 tive organs is sufficiently cm-ious to be quoted. The animal 

 has four separate stomachs: "The first, which is mem- 



