MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION ON PUFFIN ISLAND. 27 
of schemes of decoration. Some simple artistic designs, 
applied in co-operation, under the direction of the teacher, 
might convert our wide expanses of whitewashed walls in 
the rooms, and the broad yellow planks between and 
around our sleeping bunks, into things of beauty, which 
would be a joy for ever to the sojourning biologists, and a 
constant reminder that there is something else in the 
world besides science, and another side to nature from 
the one they are especially observing in the field and in 
the laboratory. We have made a feeble beginning by 
cutting our initials on the front of the bunks we usually 
occupy, and by labelling the head planks with their official 
designations, such as ‘‘hon. treasurer’s bunk;”’ but there 
is still abundant opportunity for further decoration. 
One of the most interesting animals obtained this time 
was the sea slug Dendronotus arborescens of which a 
specimen was dredged in the channel about a quarter of a 
mile off the south-west end of the island. This animal is 
not uncommon at many places round our coast, but the 
special interest of this particular one is as follows :—Until 
lately Dendronotus has not been found anywhere near 
Puffin. Five years careful shore-collecting and dredging 
in the neighbourhood failed to turn up a single specimen. 
At Hilbre Island, on the other hand, this magnificent sea 
slug is abundant, and forms one of the most characteristic 
features of the fauna. With the view of introducing this, 
which is certainly the finest of our British nudibranchs, at 
Puffin two separate batches were taken down alive from 
Hilbre in September, 1888, and were set free at low tide 
on the South Spit. They had disappeared before the next 
tide, and all further search for them or their progeny, both 
by sea and shore, during the following two years was 
fruitless, and we were beginning to think that the experi- 
ment had failed. During the “‘ Hyena” cruise of last 
