A Summer Afternoon by the Sea. 151 



which, in the smooth seas of the tropics, the naturalist-voyager 

 rigs out over the quarter of the ship, and leaves to gather what 

 it may, rarely fails to yield to the morning's examination, as the 

 result of the night's collection, a variety of creatures which are 

 rarely or never seen by day. And I have occasionally been 

 amply rewarded by taking my muslin bag-net down to the sea- 

 side at nine or ten o'clock at night, and dipping at random as 

 I stood on the lowest step of the quay stairs, or on some pro- 

 jecting rock, while the water flashed with bright phosphoric 

 radiance at every movement. 



Occasionally too, by carefully searching over the tiny basins 

 in the rocks left full by the retired tide, — those most fascinating- 

 little pools which are fringed all round with floating filmy leaves 

 of green or crimson, and tiny flexible shrubs with purple 

 branches as fine as hair, — we may succeed in taking a prize. 

 It was thus that a scientific friend a day or two ago obtained a 

 very rare and otherwise interesting animal, which he kindly put 

 into my hands.* 



It was Tomopteris onisciformis. Ten years ago, when I was 

 spending a summer at Ilfracoinbe, I met with it, in the way 

 I have described above, dipping it with a muslin net from the 

 open sea. Believing it to be new, I described and figured it 

 under the name of Johnstonella Gatharina.f 



In this supposition I was mistaken ; and soon afterwards 

 Dr. John Edward Gray, of the British Museum, gave the fol- 

 lowing information concerning the animal, in a note in the 

 Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist, for August, 1853 : — 



" It appears to belong to the same genus as the animal de- 

 scribed by Eschscholtz in the Isis (1825), p. 736, t. 5, f. 5, 

 under the name of Tomopteris onisciformis, from the South Seas ; 

 and by MM. Quoy and Gaimard, in the Voyage of the Astro- 

 labe, ii. p. 284, t. 21, f. 21, 24, under the name of Briaroea 

 scolopendra, from the coast of Spain. Hermannsen has pro- 

 posed to change the latter name to Briaroea ; Harry Goodsir 

 calls it Briar ens ; and Mr. R. Ball writes it Bryarea.\ Esch- 

 scholtz, and Quoy and Gaimard regard it as a mollusk ; the 

 first referring it to the order Heteropoda, and the latter to the 

 Nudibranchiata. 



11 Mr. Harry Goodsir, who found the animal abundant in 

 the North Sea {Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. 1845, xvi. 163), 

 observing the presence of ' cilia fringing the bifurcated poste- 



* I call it rare, because through ten years' habitual searching of the sea on 

 our south and south-west coasts, I have met with it so seldom. Dr. Carpenter 

 however, finds it not uncommon on the western shores of Scotland. 



t Devonshire Coast, p. 356, pi. xxv. 



J Probably in ignorance of the allusion, which was to Eriareus, the hundred 

 handed giant of the old Greek theogony. If the name had been retainable, Mr. 

 Goodsir's orthography would have been the more correct one — Bpidpecas. 



