278 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



the rippling music, and you are absorbed in eager inspection 

 of shell and weed. It is jirobable that this stooping and 

 peering, accompanied by the motion of the vessel, will bring 

 on the nausea and headache, if not worse, which hitherto you 

 have escaped. I will not pretend that this is pleasant ; but 

 there is no help for it. None but the brave deserve the 

 mollusc ! The pain is transient, the delight persists. You 

 may return home at the close of the day probably uncomfoit- 

 able, and certainly hideous ; but behind you, Jack is bringing 

 a bucketful of treasures ; and to-morrow you ^vill only know 

 that you have these treasures. 



The first thing you have to do on the morrow is to 

 "identify" the animals — a long and interesting, though 

 sometimes perplexing process, OAving to the exasperating 

 system adopted by naturalists of frequently selecting, as 

 marks, characteristics by no means obvious. For example, 

 when you read the sentence "shell flexible/' among the curt 

 indications by which an animal is to be identified, how are 

 you to suspect that the animal in question has no shell visi- 

 ble at all, until you have dissected it, and found the thin 

 calcareous plate underneath the back, covering the liver? 

 That one sentence " shell flexible " prevented my identifying 

 a Pleurohranchus for at least an hour. 



Nor have I to this day been able to identify the species of 

 a compound Ascidian (which I only know to be an Ascidian 

 from embryological indications), probably known to natural- 

 ists, perhaps yet undescribed. It is of a bright orange colour. 

 From a transparent gelatinous basis minute cylindrical tubes 

 rise, each about the twentieth of an inch in height, standing 



