# The Aquarium (Gosse)/Chapter 8

CHAPTER VIII.
"The floor is of sand, like the mountain-drift, And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow; From coral-rocks the sea-plants lift Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow.
"The water is calm and still below, For the winds and waves are absent there And the sands are bright as the stars that glow In the motionless fields of the upper air. ****** "And life, in rare and beautiful forms, Is sporting amid those bowers of stone, And is safe, when the wrathful spirit of storms Has made the top of the waves his own.
Percival.
A DRAG ON SMALLMOUTH SANDS
I have on two occasions described a dredging trip, undertaken principally under the north line of coast, ranging from Whitenose outward, and off shore towards the spot where the East Indiaman "Abergavenny" struck and sank with three hundred souls, about fifty years ago. The place is still familiarly spoken of by the fishermen, under the ill-fated ship's name, or as they frequently abbreviate it, "the Abbey," and they pretend that the remains of the wreck may still be seen.
But frequently we varied the ground and its produce, by beating down to the southward, until we got ​within Portland Roads, and then reaching in-shore towards the ferry, as far as we dared for the shallows, dredged the ground over with the tide, in various traverses off Smallmouth Sands, and under Sandsfoot. The sand shoals off in some places very gradually, and one day we scraped along and stuck fast, the boat's keel deep in the mud and silt, and immoveable, though the shore was more than half a mile distant. The tide, however, took us off after some delay, which no doubt seemed longer than it really was, and allowed us to go on with our dredging.
From this Bay a favourable view is obtained of the equestrian figure of George III, which is cut on the slope of a hill above Preston, and which by the exposure of the chalk is very conspicuous on the green turf. It is a very remarkable work of art on several accounts; first, that it was executed by a private soldier with only his own resources; secondly, for its colossal dimensions, being 174 feet in height; thirdly, for its vraisemblance not only to a man on horseback, but to the king himself: and fourthly, because being intended to be viewed at some miles distance, on a very inclined surface, the drawing had to be made, not in natural proportions, but very considerably distorted, yet the success is complete.
In raking the bottom of this Bay, we meet with various kinds of ground. In many places it is smooth sand; in others a whitish tenacious mud; off Sandsfoot Castle the low ledges crop out, and offer their abrupt margins across the course in which we are working; these have to be carefully avoided. Again in some places there are extensive beds of Zostera; ​in others great, tangled, half-rotten masses of dead sea-weeds, such as Rhytiphlea and Fucus, with leaves of the Zostera twining among them, fill the dredge; most disappointing, because both unpleasant and unproductive. At other places we get stones, old shells, and nice specimens of living weeds.
The keer-drag on the sandy bottom takes several interesting fishes. Among them is the Little Weaver (Trachinus vipera), a fish elegant in form and colour, but dangerous, and reputed to be poisonous. The first dorsal, which, being of a deep black hue, contrasts well with the chaste grey of the upper parts, is armed with very strong spines, and there is a long and very sharp one on each side of the head. The fish is said to direct its blows with these spines with great judgment and precision; and wounds inflicted by them are said to be peculiarly painful and difficult of cure. Hence possibly it was the Scorpios of the ancients:
Ovid.
Other ground fishes I have also obtained here, as the Solenette (Monochirus linguatulus), and the Lemon Sole (Solea pegusa), besides more common kinds of Flat-fishes; and other species resembling these in form, colour and habit, and as it were representing them, though widely differing structurally. I refer to the Skates and their allies. Pretty little specimens occur of the Thornback (Raia clavata), with numerous white spots, very round, distinct, and ocellated; and of the Painted Ray (R. microcellata), distinguished from ​its fellows by several series of pale bands, forming concentric arcs sub-parallel to each of the four margins of the body. Mr. Yarrell speaks of this as very rare, but I obtained three examples in one day. The Bordered Ray (R. marginata) is another rarity which I have taken here, distinguished by the wide band of dark brown that margins the disk. The Angel (Squatina angelus) also sometimes comes up in the drag, a species intermediate between the Rays and the Sharks; but he is too hideous to dwell upon.
Some lovely little Nudibranch Mollusca frequently are found clinging to the meshes of the net; especially one of extraordinary beauty, when examined with a lens, though to the careless eye it appears dull and insignificant. I refer to Ægires punctilucens, a little slug of pale reddish-brown hue, covered with tubercles, but studded here and there with black spots, in the centre of which is a speck of most lustrous green or blue, looking exactly as if a minute sapphire or emerald had been set there.
But perhaps most characteristic of this particular beat are the Crustacea. Various sorts of Crabs that occur in deeper water are also found here, as the Long-legged Spider-crabs (Stenorhynchus and Inachus); and the more sluggish sorts, as Pisa, Hyas, and Maia, whose rough shells are frequently so covered with a forest of growing sea-weeds, that, as they crawl and stagger along, they remind one of Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane. The true Shrimps (Crangon), or Sand-raisers, as they are not inappropriately called by the fishermen, are, however, peculiar to the shallow sands. Of this genus we have ​five species at least in Weymouth Bay, some of which, remarkable for the variety and beauty of their colours, I have noticed elsewhere. All the species burrow expertly in the sand, not entirely, but so as just to leave exposed the two eyes, which, like the garret-windows of a house (as Captain Harris says of the eyes of the Hippopotamus), are placed on the very summit of the head.
On the weeds and sea-grass those pretty Prawns are abundant which have been called Æsops, after the old hump-backed fabulist, because of the projection of the third segment of the abdomen dorsally, giving to these little Crustacea a curiously deformed appearance, when extended. The most common of our species, Cranch's Esop (Hippolyte Cranchii), has the hump very strongly marked. It is a pretty, active little thing, darting rapidly from weed to weed, varying much in colour, but usually mottled and clouded with white and purple. In another species just described by my friend Mr. Thompson under the name of H. Whitei, the deformity is scarcely perceptible; and this is a particularly lovely kind, being as elegant in form as it is brilliant in colour, and therefore very desirable for an Aquarium. The whole of the animal is of a fine emerald-green, with a pure white line running down the back; the body sprinkled with specks of azure. In the Tank this pretty species is not very lively, habitually clinging to sea-weeds and swimming little. Unfortunately it is the favourite prey of the larger Prawns (Palæmon), so that it cannot be preserved with these. If a few of the Hippolytes be turned ​into an Aquarium, of which the Palæmones are tenants, in a very few minutes each of the latter will be found to have captured one of the elegant strangers, and to be greedily devouring it.
Here too we get the Scarlet-lined Æsop (Pandalus annulicornis), a Prawn of larger dimensions, sufficient to entitle it to a place at our tables. You would at first sight mistake it for the common Prawn (Palæmon serratus), but for the diagonal stripes of rich red that run along each side of its pellucid body. It is a handsome species, but as I have not observed any peculiarities of importance in its economy, I content myself with a figure of it, which will be found in Plate VI.
THE PLUMOSE ANEMONE.
This species, (Actinia dianthus) is by far the largest and most magnificent of our native Anemones, though I think I could hardly call it, with Müller, "actiniarum pulcherrima," as it is excelled in beauty surely by A. crassicornis, and by several of the smaller species. It varies greatly in size, form (so far at least as this depends on extension or contraction), and colour. I have seen specimens in the same colony, doubtless a family group, one eighth of an inch in diameter, and others four inches. Dr. Johnston speaks of some five inches wide. Sometimes the same individual shrinks down to an abject flatness, and presently swells and rises into a noble massive column, from which the fringed disk expands and arches over on every side, reminding the beholder of a palm-tree. Then again, on some cause ​of alarm, real or supposed, it will suddenly close, and assume a distended globose appearance, with the oval mouth a little open, and filled with the clustering tentacles.
In colour the variety, though considerable, is restricted to certain limits easily defined. The most beautiful varieties that I have seen are the pure white, and the rich full orange or red-lead; but the more common states are cream-colour, flesh-colour, pale red, and olive. This last is perhaps the least pleasing hue, but there is considerable variation even here, for in some the tint approaches to a warm umber-brown, and in others becomes a dingy blackish olive. Generally speaking, the hue, whatever it be, is uniform in the same individual; but I possess specimens, of the umber-colour, in which the tentacles are almost white, imparting a peculiar speckled aspect to the disk; the crenated mouth in these is full orange.
The body is smooth, lubricated with mucus, and perfectly free from sucking glands. It forms at the summit of the column a thick rounded rim, sometimes everted, not in the least crenated, within which a deep groove exists around the exterior of the tentacular disk. The latter is membranous, expanded, and excessively puckered or frilled with broad and deep involutions, of which there are usually six or eight; the infoldings are sometimes simple, sometimes compound; in the latter case forming a semi-globose ​head of fine slender tentacles crowded together in seeming confusion.
When more carefully examined the membranous disk appears to be really circular in outline; the mouth, an oval orifice with crenated lips, is not placed on a cone; delicate lines, as usual, radiate from it. The innermost tentacles are placed at about half an inch from the mouth (in a large specimen); these are scattered irregularly and loosely; others succeed, more thickly, until towards the margin they become a dense fringe defying enumeration. The innermost ones are stouter than the outermost: the length of both varies much in specimens of the same size;—sometimes being not more than one fourth of an inch long, at others thrice this length.
The whole texture is somewhat pellucid, especially on the oral disk and the tentacles: the outer covering of the body appears sub-coriaceous, though soft and mucous.
In Weymouth Bay this species is very common, and still more abundant in the deeper water of the offing; both the dredge and the trawl constantly bringing up single specimens and clustered groups. The latter are sometimes very numerous, as many as twenty being not uncommonly crowded on a single oyster-shell. Of course such a group on so limited a space, must include a good many small ones; generally they are of all sizes, from the gigantic forefather of the family to the tiny great-grandchildren that are scattered round his base, no larger than peas. In general all the members of each group are of the same hue; as they are I presume strictly one family ​Yet one now and then sees an individual of quite another colour in the group; a circumstance to be accounted for on the supposition of an accidental intrusion on a ground already occupied. Flat stones, but more commonly large bivalve shells, such as oysters, pectens, and pinnæ, are the sites selected for the colonies of this Actinia.
Dr. Johnston's statement, that "A. dianthus is a permanently attached species, and cannot be removed from its site without organic injury to the base," is not confirmed by my experience. I find that it can be removed by the fingers without any difficulty, and that it adheres again to a fresh place with the same readiness as other Actiniæ. I have now in my Aquarium several specimens of large size, which I displaced in the usual manner, from their oyster-shells, by shoving them off carefully with the back of my finger-nails, and which I merely set down on the pieces of rock-work. I found them firmly refixed in the course of an hour or two, and they have manifested no disposition to unsettle themselves since, though they have been there for several weeks. On the other hand, one which I had put in with the shell to which it was affixed, presently crawled spontaneously from his original site, and took up a new abode on the rock-work. The change was effected by the ordinary gliding movement of the base, and was not particularly slow. Indeed, I can state distinctly that dianthus crawls as freely as any other species.
The rank odour noticed in A. parasitica is very powerful and enduring in this species also, as it is in A. crassicornis.
* ↑ Ann. N. H. 1853.
* ↑ The specimen described in the Cornish Fauna (iii. 79,) referred to by Dr. Johnston as probably belonging to another species, I should suppose to be but a variety similar to the above. The only thing remarkable in it that I see is, that it is said to live "between tidemarks."
Pl. V.
P. H. Gosse. del. Hanhart Chromo lith.
THE PLUMOSE ANEMONE &c.
​The principal object in the accompanying Plate, is an expanded specimen of the Plumose Anemone (Actinia dianthus) of the white variety, attached to an oyster-shell. In the front is a group of Serpula contortuplicata, with their cork-like opercula protruded, and their scarlet fans expanded. They are seated on a Scallop (Pecten opercularis); from which also springs a frond of the exquisitely delicate Nitophyllum punctatum. Behind the Anemone are tufts of the Sea-grass (Zostera marina)
RUNCINA HANCOCKI.
On the 17th of September, I took this little Mollusk by hundreds on the Zostera left dry at low spring-tide, below Sandsfoot Castle. In raking the edges of the grass in the shallow pools with a ring-net, the little black shining Nudibranchs were left on the cloth. Some were of much larger size than mentioned by Forbes and Hanley, being fully a quarter of an inch long when crawling, while others were of various degrees of minuteness, down to half a line. When contracted, out of water, they presented a close resemblance to a glossy beetle, a Gyrinus for example, but in crawling the body was considerably elongated.
In the Aquarium they are fond of crawling up the side perpendicularly till they reach the surface, when they float back-downward, or more generally let go, bend in the foot, and drop at once to the bottom.
THE FIDDLER.
Beneath a large flat stone, exposed at extreme low water, at the extremity of one of the low rough ledges ​that run out from the foot of Byng Cliff, I found in September a full grown specimen of the Velvet Fiddling Crab (Portunus puber). All the Crabs of this family, which contains a great number of species and not a few genera, are distinguished at once by a peculiar modification of the hindmost pair of feet, for the performance of an important function. They are all Swimming Crabs, and the facility with which they can roam through the element they inhabit, depends largely on the completeness of the modification which I refer to. Our common Eatable Crab, the bulky, thick-clawed, livid 8-pounder, that lies with all his ten pairs of feet so meekly folded across his breast, can swim—about as well as a stone of the same size. Now examine his hindmost feet; their single toe tapers to a sharp point in no wise differing from those of the four pairs that precede them. But the Portunidæ, or Swimming Crabs, have this last pair of feet much flattened out side-wise, and the toe in particular dilated into an oval thin-edged plate, which striking obliquely upon the water acts as an oar, with that peculiar action which is known to boatmen as sculling. In the common Shore-crab (Carcinus mænas), that abundant olive-green kind which on every rocky shore little boys and girls catch, by letting down into the crevices a piece of string with a fragment of offal tied to it,—we observe a transition condition of the hindfoot; there is a decided tendency to an ovate form, though the tip is yet taper and acute. And the habits of the animal agree with this structure. The power of shooting slantwise through the water exists, which bears the same sort of relation to the free and easy ​swimming of the typical Portunidæ, the Oceanic Crabs of the tropics, as the long leaps of the Flying Squirrels and the Petauri bear to the sustained flight of a bird.
None of our native Crabs are "at the top of the tree" in the swimming profession; their efforts, even those of the best of them (and there is a good deal of difference in the species even of the true Portuni), are awkward bunglings, when compared with the freedom and fleetness of those I have seen in the Caribbean sea, and among the Gulf weed, in the tropical Atlantic, which shoot through the water almost like a fish, with the feet on the side that happens to be the front all tucked close up, and those on the opposite side stretched away behind, so as to "hold no water," as a seaman would say, and thus offer no impediment to the way. Our species are obliged to keep their pair of sculls continually working while they swim; a series of laborious efforts just sufficient to counteract the force of gravity; and the see-saw motion of the bent and flattened joints of the oar-feet is so much like that of a fiddler's elbow, as to have given rise to a very widely adopted appellation of these Crabs, among our marine populace.
An old male of the Velvet Fiddler is a striking and handsome Crab. His body generally is clothed with a short velvety pile of a pale brown or drab hue, from beneath which here and there shines out the glossy deep black shell, especially where rubbed, as at the edges. The feet, particularly the plates of the oars, are conspicuously striped with black; the large and formidable claws are marked with bright scarlet and ​azure, as are also the foot-jaws and face; while the eyes are of the richest vermillion, projecting from hollow black sockets.
I said that he is a "striking" Crab; and, though I was quite innocent of a pun when I wrote the word, it is characteristic in more senses than one. Both it and its frequent companion, the Shore Crab, when apprehensive of assault, use the powerful claws, not to seize but to strike transversely, as a mower uses his scythe; and this action they perform viciously, and with great force and effect.
In the Aquarium the Velvet Fiddler was shy and recluse. He at once slid into the most obscure recess he could find, beneath the dark shadow of two pieces of rock that formed an arch. For some days he remained gloomily in his new castle; but at length he ventured out under the cover of night, and would wander about the floor of the tank. But he never lost his cautious suspicion, and the approach of the candle was usually the signal for a rush back to his dark retreat. He was a fit representative of one of those giants that nursery tradition tells of, as infesting Cambria and Cornwall, "in good king Arthur's days." Gloomy and grim, strong, ferocious, crafty and cruel, he would squat in his obscure lair, watching for the unsuspecting tenants of the tank to stray near, or would now and again rush out, and seize them with fatal force and precision. As the Giants Grim of old spared not ordinary-sized men for any sympathy of race, so our giant Crab had no respect for lesser Crabs, except a taste for their flesh. I had two or three full-grown Soldier Crabs (Pagurus bernhardus); themselves ​warriors of no mean prowess; two, at least, of these fell a prey to the fierce Fiddler. His manner of proceeding was regular and methodical. Grasping the unthinking Soldier by the thorax, and crushing it so as to paralyse the creature, he dragged the body out of the protecting shell. The soft plump abdomen was the bonne bouche; this was torn off and eaten with gusto, while the rest of the animal was wrenched limb from limb with savage wantonness, and the fragments scattered in front of his cave.
I saw him one day snap at a Prawn, but the elegant and agile animal was much too quick to be so caught: with a flap of its tail it shot away backward, and laughed its enemy to scorn.
There was a large Sea-worm, however (Nereis pelagica), a many-footed, Centipede-like creature, some seven inches long, that fared worse. The Fiddler seized the worm in one powerful claw, and began to gnaw it up as we do a radish: the writhings of the victim interrupted the epicure's enjoyment; he therefore took hold with the other claw also, and soon bit the body into two pieces, which continued to writhe and wriggle to the last. The giant's dinner in this instance lasted about an hour.
The Crabs are the scavengers of the sea; like the wolves and hyaænas of the land, they devour indiscriminately dead and prey. The bodies of all sorts of dead creatures are removed by the obscene appetite of these greedy Crustacea; and there is no doubt that many an enormous Crab, whose sapidity elicits praise at the epicure's table, has rioted on the decaying body of some unfortunate mariner. But what of that? Let ​us imitate the philosophy of the negro mentioned by Captain Crow. On the Guinea Coast people are buried beneath their own huts, and the Land-crabs are seen crawling in and out of holes in the floor with revolting familiarity: notwithstanding which they are caught and eaten with avidity. A negro, with whom the worthy Captain remonstrated on the subject, seemed to think this but a reasonable and just retaliation, a sort of payment in kind; replying with a grin and chuckle of triumph:—Crab eat black man; black man eat he!"
THE POGGE
An "odd fish" rejoicing under the elegant cognomen of Pogge among the vulgar, but known to the scientific votaries of sesquipedalianism by the title of Aspidophorus cataphractus, is occasionally found lurking about the quays of Weymouth. Men and boys who collect prawns and shrimps (the latter term used in its popular, not its zoological sense) go round in boats along the sides of the sea-walls, as well those outside of the harbour forming the esplanade as the commercial quays. These at low-water-line are clothed with a ragged olive fringe of Fuci, chiefly F. serratus, which hang down in an almost uninterrupted line of dense tufts, affording shelter to many small animals. The fisherman is provided with a lamm, a ​kind of bag-net, the frame of which is in the form of a bow of four feet diameter, the place of the chord being occupied by a stout piece of wood, from the centre of which passes a staff eight feet long, crossing the bow, to whose middle it is fastened. The net is a bag fixed to the bow and chord. It is used in this manner The fisherman dipping it beneath the hanging weeds, raises it to the surface, shaking it, and as it were raking the weeds with its chord; his comrade slowly pushing the boat meanwhile along the quay. After two or three dips he examines his success, picks out the prawns and shrimps, and deposits them in a bag at his waist, and throws out contemptuously all "rubbish."
It is this "rubbish," however, which to any one but the prawn-catcher constitutes the main game. Many interesting little creatures have I got in this way. Among the fishes this Pogge has occurred two or three times; chiefly small specimens not more than two inches, or three, in length, but one among them had attained the length of five inches, nearly the full dimensions of the species. The small ones were black, but the larger a dull dirty grey. The most marked peculiarity of this little fish is its armature; it is clothed, like a knight of the age of chivalry, in a suit of plate-mail, cap-a-pie. Every one of the bony-plates of which its lorica is composed is furnished with an elevated central keel; and as the plates run in regular longitudinal series, the surface of the body is armed with eight elevated sharp ridges running from head to tail. The huge head bristles with spines and bony points, and the nose terminates in a couple of spines ​that stand up and curve backwards like the horn of a Rhinoceros in miniature; while the whole under surface of the head, which is flat, is covered with a beard of horny thread-like filaments, very numerous and close-set, hanging perpendicularly downwards. Let me not, however, be understood as speaking disrespectfully of this mental adornment; for I doubt not it would be considered quite an elegant appendage in Regent Street or Pall Mall.
In the Aquarium the Pogge soon showed how exclusively he is a bottom-fish. Though his fins are ample, he has scarcely any power of swimming except by strong muscular effort, struggling upward for a little distance, and sinking to the bottom the moment the effort is relaxed. In general it lay motionless on the ground, while I had it; and I presume this is its habit when at liberty. The beard-filaments are probably delicate organs of touch, endowed with a high sensibility; and these, when the fish lies on a soft bottom, such as mud or sand, would be partly buried in it, and would be cognizant of the presence of any Annelide or Echinoderm that might be burrowing in the ground or crawling over it, fit for the capacious mouth to engulph, and the ample gullet to swallow.
THE NOTHE LEDGES
In pursuing the line of shore which extends from the foot of the Lookout to the Nothe Point, beneath a range of low, crumbling, marly cliff, we pass for a while over nearly horizontal ledges, which dip successively into the sea, as I have more than once had occasion to mention. This is a rich collecting ground. ​The broad, shallow, half-tide pools afford Anthea cereus of the grey variety, Actinia mesembryanthemum, and A. crassicornis; and in the latter part of summer Padina pavonia grows in them. Those parts of the ledges that are uncovered only at the lowest tides, yield the green-tentacled and crimson-tipped variety of Anthea, very brilliant and silky, and in great profusion; and among the sea-weeds, two or three kinds of Cladophora, Corallina, and Jania, thick tufts of Rhytiphlea pinastroides, and some Polysiphoniœ and Callithamnia.
After we have passed along for some distance, the cliffs begin to grow more lofty, and more solid and rocky in their character; the pools disappear, and the ledges become more rough, and more indented with deep narrow fissures, until they terminate in an abrupt wall or quay, which protects a tiny mimic bay. This little indentation is a most prolific source of washed sea-weeds in the summer and autumn, and many specimens of rarity and beauty are gathered here. The rich and brilliant Rhodymenia laciniata is not uncommon, and the more delicate and scarcely less beautiful Nitophyllum punctatum (See Plate V.), with Delesseria sanguinea and sinuosa, and many other species equally attractive, occur. Some of these are it is true deep-water kinds, washed in by the tides; the first named, for example, I have never met with in a growing state; but this little bay is particularly rich in littoral species. At the bottom of the wall or quay-like edge, grow several fine tufts of those very elegant Algæ, Griffithsia corallina, and G. setacea; Ceramium echionotum (See Plate VI.) and C. ​ciliatum, exquisite plants for microscopic study, are also scattered about in the lowest levels, though not often uncovered; and the fissures which penetrate the stone are well fringed with Delesseria alata, Dasya coccinea, Chylocladia articulata, Ptilota plumosa, and other shade-loving species, that grow in dense mossy tufts. The only living specimen that I found at Weymouth of Delesseria sanguinea, was growing in one of these clefts, where, also, small and brightly-coloured specimens of Phyllophora rubens occur;—a plant which is obtained much more abundantly, and of far greater dimensions, by the dredge. This is an Alga of much value for the Aquarium. It is elegant in form and colour; it bears confinement perfectly, and throws off a large quantity of oxygen; besides which it is almost always studded with multitudes of parasitic animals, particularly the smaller Zoophytes, and the branching Bryozoa.
The higher clefts in this vicinity produce Codium tomentosum, rather a rare plant here, which I value because upon it, as on a pasture, I almost always find a lovely little mollusk resembling the Nudibranchs,—Acteon viridis,—whose green coat is spangled over with most lustrous specks of blue and green, as if it were powdered with gems. This plant is useful though not elegant, as it affords a favourite food, not only to this but to other species of phytivorous Mollusks, and it will survive well in a confined vessel of sea-water.
Griffithsia setacea, which I have mentioned above, is a beautiful inhabitant of an Aquarium, and one which thrives in confinement. Professor Harvey speaks of the ease with which it is domesticated (Phycol. Brit. ​ 184); and my experience agrees with his. Its attachment to the rock is commonly slight, and its base minute, so that it is sometimes difficult to procure a firmly growing specimen; still, however, it lives and grows, though with barely sufficient base to hold the filaments together. (See Plate II.)
The surfaces of the rocks are studded between tide-levels with that curious plant Rivularia nitida; which is sure to attract attention, with its little shining balls of vivid green colour, like school-boys' marbles, lying on little beds of vegetation that adhere to the naked rock. We attempt to take them up, and find them blown bladders of tender gelatinous membrane! In the early autumn this singular plant occurs in abundance on this spot, though it is said to be rare on our shores generally.
From this point onwards to the Nothe, the cliff is more and more precipitous, and the shore incumbered with immense blocks that have fallen from above, and lie confusedly heaped upon each other. The under surfaces of these angular masses occasionally yield fine specimens of some of the more delicate Algæ, but, generally speaking, the result scarcely repays the labour and difficulty of their examination.