precious thau Aladdin's lamp ever brought into his 

 youthful visions. In front of each window is a tier of 

 tables, between the windows are rows of shelves, filled 

 with jars, bottles, phials, boxes, microscope cases, and 

 books, suggesting to one irreverent mind "a drug store 

 with a literary turn." In one corner is a stock of oars, 

 dip nets, hoes, shovels and picks, grappling irons, tow- 

 ing nets, and the other appliances for exploring the 

 bays and the shores at low tide. In another corner, 

 amidst a wilderness of old coats and tall boots, we 

 catch a glimpse of a fragmentary looking-glass, a sort of 

 rudimentary organ to the party, a connecting link be- 

 tween the informalities of the summer and the restraints 

 of home life. 



A large table in the middle of the room has on it 

 buckets and earthern dishes in which the animals are kept 

 alive by constant renewals of fresh sea-water. For the 

 study of the smaller animals a white dish filled with water 

 is more convenient than a large aquarium,f ©r the species 

 can thus be kept separate, and the specimens are 

 always conspicuously visible tor examination or draw 

 ing. An aquarium stands near, ready to receive any 

 large specimens which need to be preserved for a 

 longer time. 



A flight of steps leads up to the cock-loft, where the 

 visitor beholds an army of lobsters, star-fishes, sea ur- 

 chins, crabs, sponges and sea weeds, spread upon the 

 floor to dry. 



The tables are occupied by busy workers, one at his 

 microscope, another with his note book, others picking 

 over plates full of dredgings, searching the mud and 

 broken shells for minute forms which had not been 

 picked out in the first culling on board of the steamer; 

 others are transferring the identified specimens to their 

 houses of glass where surrounded by an atmosphere of 

 alcohol, they are to remain until needed for farther 

 study. 



At one of the tables sits a learned professor, well 

 known at home and abroad by his studies of fossil 

 cephalopods and his theory of the "Origin of Genera." 

 Sponges of many and beautiful forms fill his bottles 

 and his bowls of sea water. He is studying, too, the 

 lower mollusks, the Bryozoa and the Turricata. Per- 

 haps he will allow you a peep through his microscope 

 at a curious object which looks like a little "tadpole." 

 Thereby hangs a tale as well as a tail, for this little 

 creature is causing a commotion in scientific circles just 

 now. It is the early or larval stage of one of the "sea 

 peaches, "Cynthia earned; and though one of the lowest 

 of the mollusca , has been declared by a Russian natur- 

 alist, M. Kowalewsky, to show in its tail traces of a 



