84 The Zoologist at Scarborough. 



THE ZOOLOGIST AT SCARBOROUGH. 



BY THE REV. G. EOWE, M.A. 



Scarborough is too famous as a hunting-ground for the marine 

 naturalist to render it necessary for me to reiterate its claims to 

 notice, yet I know by sad experience how very possible it is 

 to go to a rich preserve of this sort only to find one's most 

 diligent search repaid with empty vessels ; and I may therefore 

 be permitted to rehearse the favourite spots known to me for 

 the benefit of any of your readers who may be there without a 

 guide. These are then, first, the rocks beneath the castle. 

 Here the blue lias stretches out to seawards in tabular masses 

 almost perfectly level, the dip being really to the west. The 

 flat strata are constantly breaking up, and wearing away, leav- 

 ing lines of pools beneath their basset edges, which at once 

 catch the eye as likely spots for the naturalist's labours. Occa- 

 sionally, these pools deepen into some fissure, six feet deep, and 

 then the cooler water (assisted by its greater quantity) v is the 

 prolific habitat of numerous delicate alga? and mollusca, which 

 do not thrive in the warmer and sun-lighted shallows. 



The ground-plan of these slightly inclined lias beds, toge- 

 ther with their superficial pools, is overlaid and obscured by the 

 confused debris from the sandstone cliffs above. Some of the 

 fallen blocks are so large as to remain stationary under all but 

 the most violent storms. There is one great mass, which I 

 have seen for the last two years, whose under-side slopes up at 

 one corner, so that at low-water the explorer may twist his 

 head and shoulders under it, and then appears the advantage of 

 being exceedingly short-sighted ; for within an inch or two of 

 one's nose is a dripping mass of seaweeds and zoophytes, where 

 beautiful nudibranchs display their rich colours and curious 

 anatomy, and the pretty little univalve, Cyprcea 3wropcea t 

 crawls like a living pearl among the swelling lobes of the dead- 

 man's thumb (Alcyonium digitatum). The whole aperture 

 teems with life ; the weed-covered sides conceal Littormir, 

 Lacuna-, Chitons, and other mollusks, and in the dank shades 

 of the pools beneath beauteous Actiniai perennially expand their 

 rays, green, yellow, and scarlet, and bright star-fish glide over 

 the rocks witli the stealthy motion of their thousand flexile 

 suckers, each of which is a marvel of mechanism. Here, in the 

 month of .June or .July, you may gather in half-an-hour such a 

 store of living things, animal ;m< I vegetable, as shall afford study 

 and recreation for a month. 



The second spot worthy of mention is a ledge of flatfish 

 rooks,immediatelyoppoBitethebridge. These are only uncovered 

 for a short time at low-water, spring tides. They produce a 



