THE INTELLECTUAL OBSERVER. 



OCTOBER, 186 9. 



A SUMMER AFTERNOON BY THE SEA. 



THE TOMOPTEEIS. 

 BY PHILIP HENEY GOSSE, F.E.S. 



Duping the summer months a naturalist on any part of the 

 coast may have many opportunities of obtaining some of the 

 rarer marine animals, and among them not a few of highly 

 curious structure, or otherwise possessed of great interest, by 

 collecting at the surface of the calm sea. Influences, which we 

 can at present only conjecturally estimate, or which are alto- 

 gether inappreciable to us, bring, at certain times and in certain 

 conditions, perhaps electrical, of the sea or of the air above it, 

 many forms of delicate animal life from the recesses in which 

 they ordinarily conceal themselves to that stratum of the water 

 which is in close proximity to the atmosphere. On a quiet day, 

 when the surface has a glittering mirror-like smoothness, when 

 the sun is shining, but a hazy veil slightly mitigates the fierce- 

 ness of his heat, in the afternoon hours, if the observer will 

 take a boat and pull gently about under the headlands, and 

 into the tiny bays and inlets that are separated from each other 

 by points of black rock, from which long draperies of wrack 

 and oarweed and tangle hang down in the sleeping water, he 

 may take many a curious form which, under a lens or on the 

 stage of his microscope, will afford him both entertainment and 

 instruction. The eye is not of much service in this mode of 

 collecting ; many of the desiderata are of minute or even micro- 

 scopic dimensions, and most of the others are so transparent 

 and colourless, that even when culled from the teeming bosom 

 of the waters, and inclosed in a clear glass vase, they can be 

 discerned by the eye only fitfully and with difficulty. A bag 

 of fine muslin stretched on a hoop of wire fastened to the end 

 of a staff some five feet long, is the best appliance for secur- 

 ing the prey. There should also be in the boat a large glass 

 vessel — a confectioner's cylinder is very suitable — and two or 

 three phials, such as those in which chemists keep sulphate of 

 quinine. If the collector add a couple of glass tubes, respect- 

 VOL. II. — no. in. m 



