THE WONDEES OF THE SHORE. 65 



of grey bladders, with something like a little bud 

 at the tip ? What are the hundreds of little pink- 

 striked pears? What those tiny babies' heads, 

 covered with grey prickles instead of hair? Tlie 

 great red star-fish, which Ulster children call "the 

 bad man's hands ; " and the great whelks, which 

 the youth of Musselburgh know as roaring buckles, 

 these we have seen ; but what, oh what, are the 

 red capsicums ? — 



Yes, what are the red capsicums ? and why are 

 they poking, snapping, starting, crawling, tumbling 

 wildly over each other, rattling about the huge 

 mahogany cockles, as big as a man's two fists, out 

 of which they are protruded ? Mark them well, 

 for you will perhaps never see them again. They 

 are a Mediterranean species, or rather three species, 

 left behind upon these extreme south-western coasts, 

 probably at the vanishing of that warmer ancient 

 epoch, which clothed the Lizard point with the 

 Cornish heath, and the Killarney mountains with 

 Spanish saxifrages, and other relics of a flora whose 

 home is now the Iberian peninsula, and the sunny 



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