A Dredging Excursion. 81 



liave small cups or suckers on the inner side, and two larger 

 ones which only have cups at their extremities, how delicately 

 the whole body is painted over with spots ; touch him, and at 

 once the clear water becomes black with the cuttle-fish ink, for 

 that is the Sepiola atlantica. 



Pick up that mouse-like animal — its back is covered with a 

 kind of down, out of which sprout spines of different length, 

 coloured with all the hues of the rainbow, the score or so of 

 bristles exhibiting every imaginable brilliant metallic tint. 

 When you go home put one of those hairs under a microscope, 

 and see how nature has provided a hard sheath into which 

 these weapons are retracted, so that the soft parts of the animal 

 can receive no injury ; pluck some of the down off the back, 

 and you will expose a double set of large scales attached to the 

 alternate segments of the animal ; that is the hairy sea-mouse, 

 Aphrodite hispida. Here is another Annelid, a Nereis, which 

 boasts of a distinct head, eyes, and mouth, and wriggles about 

 by means of the tentacles issuing from its many feet. Look at 

 this dirty, leathery tube fastening to a large stone, place it in 

 the water, and in about five or ten minutes, if you look again, 

 you will see such a rainbow frill, such a circle of plumes 

 surrounding the opening ! that is a Sabella, and those are its 

 branchige or breathing organs ; that central elongated disk acts 

 as an operculum, and although funnel-shaped is not pervious, 

 but is one of the tentacles purposely enlarged to plug up the 

 aperture of the tube when the animal retreats within. To the 

 same stone adheres very tenaciously a small shell, which on a 

 close examination you will find to consist of eight plates, over- 

 lapping each other at their edge and joined together by a 

 leathery mantle ; get it off the stone with your nail, and, holding 

 it in your hand for a minute, you will see the plates separate, 

 and the extremities come close together, till what was a flat 

 surface has become almost a ball ; in the jar, however, it soon 

 fastens itself to the side, where you may see the muscular foot, 

 the expansion and contraction of which form the locomotive 

 power of the animal, that is a Chiton, Gh. cinereus, admirable 

 for the beautiful moulding on his back. Here is a white Eolis, 

 with gills arranged on each side, the tentacles not retractile. 

 There is a good sized globular shell with four or five whorls, 

 nicely dotted with brown streaks on a greyish-yellow ground ; 

 drop him into the jar that you may view the large foot with a 

 large, broad lobe in front, so broad, indeed, as to conceal the 

 head, close to the lobe you will perceive the tentacles sprouting 

 out, this is a carnivorous mollusc, Natica monilifera. In the 

 bottom of the basket you may find what is called " an elephant's 

 tooth," Dentalium entalis ; notice the shell, it is tubular, 

 slightly curved and tapering from end to end, with an opening 



