76 GLAUCUS; OE, 



the pitiless roll of the ground-swell ; but they are 

 not so far gone, but that if you take one , of 

 them home, and put it in a jar of water, it will 

 expand into a delicate compound flower, wliich can 

 neither be described nor painted, of long pellucid 

 tentacles, hanging like a thin bluish cloud over a 

 disk of mottled brown and grey. 



Here, adhering to this large whelk, is another, 

 but far larger and coarser. It is Sagartia parasitica, 

 one of our largest British species ; and most sin- 

 gular in this ; that it is almost always (in Torbay, 

 at least,) found adhering to a whelk : but never to 

 a live one ; and for this reason. The live whelk 

 (as you may see for yourself when the tide is out) 

 burrows in the sand in chase of hapless bivalve 

 shells, whom he bores through with his sharp 

 tongue (always, cunning fellow, close to the hinge, 

 where the fish is), and then sucks out their life. 

 Now, if the anemone stuck to him, it would be 

 carried under the sand daily, to its own disgust. 

 It prefers, therefore, the dead whelk, inhabited by 

 a soldier crab, Pagurus Bernhardi (PL XI. Pig. 2), 



