188 THE VICTOniAN NATURALIST. 



but what is peculiar, although these two species of, with us, rare 

 shells are so common on the shore of Elizabeth Island, the 

 commoner shells that we are accustomed to see on the beaches of 

 Port Phillip Bay were hardly represented at all. On the way to 

 this island, we made use of a small naturalist's dredge that I happened 

 to have with me, but did not succeed in getting anything of import- 

 ance beyond a live Waldheimia fiavescens, attached by the peduncle 

 to the shell of an Area, and a large Voluta, containing a live hermit 

 crab. As a rule, the dredge came up with nought else but a load 

 of broken shells, sand, and seaweed. Just as we were about to 

 return, the Avind fell, and so we had to betake ourselves to rowing'to 

 save the unpleasant alternative of having to stay out in the Bay all 

 night, and as it was, only succeeded in reaching the Griffith's Point 

 pier at about ten p.m., just at slack water, and had we been a 

 quarter of an hour later we should have had the tide against us, and 

 in spite of all we could do to the contrary, would have been carried 

 far back on the way to Elizabeth Island, and had to stay out all 

 night in the Bay. This narrow shave, however, we considered was 

 altogether owing to our friend, the fisherman, who would persist in 

 declining our offers of help, and rowing the boat himself, and then, 

 regardless of the law of conservation of energy, would persist in 

 entertaining us with snatches of songs on the way, and stopping 

 every now and then to deliver himself of philosophical reflections, 

 one of which I must, for the sake of the ladies, place on record. He 

 was an enthusiastic admirer of the fair sex, and gave it as his mature 

 conviction that ''women was everything and men was nothing. 

 My fellow-tourist gently remarked that Adam was created before 

 Eve, upon which he immediately rejoined, "Uh ! show me what a 

 man is and I'll tell you wliat his mother was." 



But, however, to return to the subject. We arrived at the 

 Griffith's Point pier just in the nick of time, feeling very cold, tired, 

 and with a "sensation of emptiness about the coniinissariat depart- 

 ment," as the fishermen humorously put it, but very thankful for 

 the narrow escape from being out in an open boat all night in 

 Western Port Bay, with the certainty of catching on.' (l^aths with 

 cold, for it being very hot when we started, we ha 1 iiuprovidently 

 neglected to take wraps. 



On the following day, having Imsiness in town, I left my friend 

 to g^ursue his microscopical investigations alone and returned home- 

 wards, and so ended mv last visit to Griffith's Point. 



ERRATA. 

 On Page 122, for ^'purpuratcr read ^' piperata." 



