BEACH RAMBLES. 359 
the little sand-fleas leap in all directions, like so many grasshop- 
sS. 
The rocks are covered, in every direction, by an encrustation of 
barnacles, Balanus ovularis and elongatus, whose tentacles waving 
to and fro in the water, were supposed by the ancients to be the 
feathers of the young barnacle geese ; and creeping about may be 
found in great abundance the common cockle, Purpura lapillus, in 
all varieties of color, white, yellow, slate, banded, and often prom- 
inently marked by its lines of growth. The writer has one speci- 
men, pure white, heterostrophed, the only one he has ever seen 
among thousands. 
The animal is carnivorous, and may often be seen boring his 
way through some other shell, making those round holes often 
seen in dead shells, and then at his leisure sucking out the unfor- 
tunate inhabitant, so that it seems poetical justice, when he in his 
turn has his shell summarily cracked, that he may be used as bait 
for the cunner or sea-perch, with which the coast abounds. 
The three species of Littorina, L. rudis, L. tenebrosa, L. palli- 
ata, are seen travelling on all sides, and of all colors, white, black, 
red, yellow. 
Tumbling over each other in eager haste, are various dead shells, 
each tenanted by a hermit crab, Eupagurus, having no covering 
for the posterior portion of his body, and so seeking protection in 
some empty shell, brandishing his claws at the entrance most 
fiercely, but often overcome and driven out by some stronger rela- 
tive attracted by the superior accommodations of his tenement. 
Here also may be found a stranger lately arrived upon our shores, 
but which has been for several years working its way south, from 
Halifax, whither it seems to have been imported from Europe, 
Littorina litorea, the common periwinkle. The shell is black, and 
very thick, and the animal may yet become of commercial value, as 
in England, where everything edible is used for food, one London 
firm sells annually seventy thousand bushels of this mollusk. 
Looking closely into the miniature caverns worn in the rocks by 
the action of the waves, we see great numbers of the star-fish or 
five-finger, Asterias vulgaris, of every variety of size and color, 
and may with interest study their slow locomotion as they put in 
action their myriads of suckers, on the under side of the body. 
The sea-ege, Echinus granulatus, is found in company, moving its 
long spines and sending out hundreds of thread-like suckers be- 
