A Dredging Excursion. 79 



soon it fastens itself to, the jar, and begins to crawl with the 

 thousand suckers it protrudes from rays and disk — this is So- 

 laster papposa. 



Here is a Trochus, or " top," with his roughly granulated 

 whorls beautifully marked and sculptured, its pointed spire and 

 finely turned lip. There are one or two rarer Mangelia and a 

 Triton crawling along the bottom of the basket. But see, the 

 boatman is just throwing a handful of mussels overboard, and 

 when we stop him, he abandons his occupation in contempt at 

 the idea of our being such fools as to come this distance to pick 

 mussels. Well, " all is not gold that glitters," and vice versa. 

 Turning to the despised mussels, we find something sticking to 

 the shells, and, as we touch it with the nail, we perceive that 

 we have some nice specimens of Flustra with parasitic Gellu- 

 laria, and other interesting varieties of the Polyzoa. Now look 

 attentively at that stone, see those two slugs — one dirty grey 

 and one with red tipped tentacles ; these are both specimens of 

 Nudibranchs. Put them into the jar, you will see the former 

 expand its beautiful barred or ringed gills, and close to the 

 eye you will see two beautiful toothed horns, that is a Doris; 

 the other is much rarer JEolis rufabrancMalis ; we shall soon 

 most likely encounter a white Eolis. Here is another bunch 

 of mussels, each fastened by his thread-like byssus to a small 

 stone, and all tied together, sociably enjoying, each others' so- 

 ciety. Crack one with a hammer, and lo ! a very tiny Pea 

 crab (rejoicing, like other little people, in a long and important 

 name, Pinnotheres pisum) looks out of his shell ; he is beauti- 

 fully blotched with brown patches on a yellow or orange ground. 

 The old superstition was, that Nature had not given the mussel 

 eyes, so he made a compact with our little friend similar to that 

 which the blind man is said to have made with the lame, accord- 

 ing to our schoolboy tradition. 



While we have been sorting this basket, the boatmen have 

 had their shank-trawl overboard, which is a net twelve feet by 

 ten, fastened to two " trawl heads" as they are called, which I 

 may explain, for the information of the uninitiated, to be semi- 

 circular flat bands of iron attached to the extremities of a wooden 

 beam, which extends for the whole length of the net, the lower 

 mouth of which is weighted by a chain wolded round with old 

 rope. As the net sweeps along the bottom, the upper mouth 

 kept open by the trawl heads and beam, the fish, rudely roused 

 from their repose by the chain, rush into it as their nearest 

 place of safety, and suffer the consequences of their rashness. 

 All hands are called to haul the net on deck; quantities of 

 plaice, Platessa vulgaris, and soles, Solea vulgaris, are flounder- 

 ing about, but look ! what a beautiful fish we have here, the 

 Gemmeous Dragonet, Gallionymus lyra ; admire its different 



