A Visit to Llandudno. 11 



culata, rejoiced the eye. He is no rarity, but, like most of his 

 family, beautiful when displayed, and great is the wonder of 

 those who have no acquaintance with this kind of creature to 

 find its gills, or water-lungs, converted into decorations as fine 

 as any ostrich plume. Two other items look even more un- 

 promising at first sight than our friend the slug ; they are dirty 

 leathery tubes, caught up from little hollows at the bottom of 

 the rocks. They, or rather their inmates, are now happy in a 

 washhand basin, which, for a time, will do as well for them as 

 Llandudno Bay. From each tube comes forth an exquisitely 

 painted thing, something between a fan and a flower. Here 

 again are specimens of ornamental gills. Through each plume 

 the fluids to be aerated take their course. While all is quiet, 

 the living fan, or flower, expands its rays ; but if danger ap- 

 proaches, in goes the wondrous apparatus, and only the dingy 

 tube remains in view. Mr. Gosse has described how these 

 worms (Sabella)* make their tubes, and they are so much at 

 their ease in Mr. Drabble' s aquarium, that they will replace the 

 plumes which some habit of their nature, or temporary disease, 

 causes them to shed. 



It is a very common characteristic of the sea-beauties to be 

 mere lumps of ugliness when not at home. The two instances 

 given will illustrate this fact, but here are morsels of dirty 

 gristle, yellowish and white, more or less cleft into lobes and 

 finger-like projections. Nothing could seem further removed 

 from the ideal than such unpleasant prosy dabs. They were 

 torn off the sides of rocks, which only low tides uncover, hid 

 among the hanging tresses of the Bladder -weed (Fucus vesi- 

 culosus), and only discoverable by active search. These, too, 

 the friendly basin holds, and after they have had time to get 

 over the flurry incidental to their capture, from every dent and 

 pore out come hundreds of polyps, clear as crystal, each enjoy- 

 ing its individual fife, and also its portion of the social or 

 collective life of the entire mass, which is named " Mermaid's 

 Glove," " Dead Men's Fingers," or Alcyonia digitata. 



Small lumps of honey-combed rock, struck off with ham- 

 mer and chisel, are among the captures of the day. They were 

 selected because certain little red spots, visible till disturbed, 

 suggested a probability of acquiring the not very common and 

 very pretty anemone, the Edivardsia camea, which Mr. Gosse 

 figures and describes in his admirable work. When they think 

 all is safe, they come out of their little caves ; when alarmed, 

 they retreat, and no one unacquainted with their habits would 

 suspect their existence in the deserted-looking rock. 



Other classes of creatures have helped to fill the bottles 

 and the basket, such as polyzoa, and polyps very different 

 * See Intellectual Obsebveb, March, 1863, p. 77. 



