BCHINODBBMATA. 
293 
Sea-eggs were a choice dish upon the tables of the Greeks and 
Bomans ; they were then served up with vinegar or hydromel, with 
the addition of mint or parsley. When Lentulus feasted the priest 
of Mars — the Flamen Martialis — this formed the first dish at supper. 
Sea-eggs also appeared at the marriage feast of the goddess Hebe. 
“ Afterwards,” says the poet, “ cauie crabs and sea-urchins, which do 
not swim in the sea, but content themselves by travelling on the sandy 
shore.” For my own part, I have only once partaken of sea-urchin, 
and they appeared to me to be food fit for the gods ; but perhaps the 
circumstances sufficiently explain this dash of culinary enthusiasm. 
The Eeserve restaurant at Marseilles has not always been the vast, 
stone edifice we now behold, backed majestically by the mountain, and 
fronting the sea on the promenade of the Comiche du Prado. In 
1845 it rose quite at the entrance of the port, a small glass cage, 
suspended as it were by a magic thread between the heavens and the 
sea. From this aerial dwelling, overhanging with unheard-of audacity 
the waters which surrounded it on all sides, we gazed on the most 
wonderful prospect in the world, and reposed ourselves while enjoying 
this intoxicating scene, during which the ships were continually enter- 
ing the port, passing under our very feet. It was in this enchanted 
palace that sea-urchins were served up, supported by the traditional 
houillabaise. 
As I have said, it appeared to me delicious. Was it the Provencal 
di.sh, the savoury houillabaise, which contributed to my appreciation 
of the humble sea-urchin of the Mediterranean ? Was not the mar- 
vellous view which I enjoyed from the heights of my empyreum of 
glass the indirect cause of it ? This is a tender and charming problem 
Which I love to leave floating in the clouds, halt evanescent, of my 
youthful recollections. 
Holothuria. 
The ignorant, like you and I, call the Holothuria the Cornechou, 
° r Sea-cucumber, and perhaps, for two reasons, they are not far 
Wrong. The term sea-cucumber expresses with wonderful exactness 
Bie shape of the animal, and its habitation, the sea ; and, again, it 
Would puzzle the most learned to explain the word Holothuria. The 
B)dy 0 c strange creature presents the form of an elongated and 
