over the coloured illustrations in the works
of Dr. Greville of Edinburgh and Dr. Harvey
of Dublin. Whoever has hung over volumes
of figures and specimens during long and
delightful evenings, has found his imagination
restoring the plants to their habitats, and
forming fancy pictures of the beauty and
wonder imparted by this sweetly wild flora
to the gardens of the sea.

Lamouroux says, sea plants are distributed
upon lines of coast at a common depth of
water. Andouin and Milne Edwards found
a similar distribution of marine animals.
Nearly thirty years have elapsed since they
published their labours. During recent
years, the Dredging Committee of the British
Association have explored many parts of the
seaboard of the British islands. Hundreds
of zealous observers have contributed to
show the distribution of vegetal and animal
life upon the coasts of England, Ireland, and
Scotland.

Prior to talking about the animals of the
coast—for the sea-gardens are both botanical
and zoological gardens—permit me, in
passing, to wipe out an imputation upon the
fair fame of the sea-weeds. They have
been called the Cryptogames— the plants
who marry clandestinely. Humble they
may be, but they are not mean enough to
marry clandestinely; and the only ground
for the imputation is their aversion to
show and ostentation. No doubt they make
no display of cups (calices) or coronets
(corolla). There is no flaunting of gay flags
and streamers, called sepals and petals. They
do not spread in the sun the gorgeous hues
of their connubial curtains. They are far
enough, indeed, from firing off pistols on the
happy occasion, like the pistol-plant (Pilea
callitrichoïdes). But there is a difference
between modesty and secrecy; and the sea-
plants are guilty of nothing clandestine.

Ulva and balani, or oyster-green and acorn-
shells mark the highest zone of the coast.
Every twelve hours the waves and spray of
high-water nourish the vegetal and animal
life of the ulva or acorn zone. Balani is the
Greek for acorns. The name acorn-shell was
doubtless suggested by the general
resemblance of the shells to the acorns of the oak.
When country cousins first see the balani,
they take them for droll, dry, dead scurf,
almost akin to the lichens, often their
neighbours on the shore. Strange creatures
indeed are these balani, and stranger still are
some of the habitats in which they are found.
I kept a colony of them in a basin of sea-water
for several months. When I found them in
the sea, they were floating upon a cork bung,
and all the trouble I had with them was to
let them float in the basin instead of the
ocean. The sea-acorns are particularly fond
of establishing themselves around the eyes
of whales. What they seem most to like
in regard to a locality or habitat is,
frequent washings from the sea spray, with
occasional immersions for short periods.
When the whale spouts, they have plenty of
spray, and when he drives they have brief
dips; and thus they show us a curious
analogy between the ulva zone and the
vicinity of the eyes of the whale. Sandars Rang
says balani are found under the umbrellas of
the medusæ. They are also found upon
turtles. Small in Europe, the acorn-shells
attain a considerable size on the shores of
the tropical seas. The naturalists have
tried with small success to give descriptive
names to the sea-acorns. The sessile and
stalked acorns have been called cirripeda
—the beard-feet. The word feet is not
happily applied to animals without
locomotion in their adult state. There are
naturalists who talk of their hairy or ciliated
arms. They call arms the machines which
others call feet. M. de Blainville tried to
hit them off by calling them nematopoda, the
feeding feet. Indeed, it is not an easy matter
to convey to the imagination the image of
the feeding machinery of the sea-acorns.
Suppose your two arms were run into one
above your head, and your ten fingers were
split into twenty-one sickle-like feathers;
suppose, moreover, you were shut up within the
closed valves of a conical shell, and had to
get a meal every twelve hours by plying this
feeding machinery as actively as possible
during a few minutes of high tide. The
feathery-feeding machinery of the sea-acorn
is as graceful as the little feathers of the bird
of paradise. The feeding-feathers are
unsheathed quickly, and are plied swiftly,
whenever a meal is to be got by activity.
There is something surprising in the change
from the torpor of the dead scurf to the
vivacity of the feeding-feathers. The feathery
sickles seem to know the brevity of
harvest-time. With their longest feathers
they make a little whirlpool, and with their
shortest they convey their food to their
mouths. At the slightest alarm, the feeding-
feathers are sheathed within the conical
valves, and the animal seems once more a
grey dead moiety of an acorn.

I cannot confirm the observation that the
optical apparatus becomes obliterated in
adult balani. My colony on the cork bung
always showed the greatest sensibility to
light. The approach of a candle
sufficed to excite their activity. No sign was
ever seen that they had moulted their eyes;
and, to make them draw in like lightning
their feeding-sickles, I had only to interpose
the shadow of my hand. Prior to receiving as
a fact a metamorphose extraordinary enough
to be " the only instance in nature," great care
is necessary against error in the observations.
Poli, who observed the balani of the Bay of
Naples, says, the eggs which are laid in
summer become adults in four months. Captain
King says, the bottom of a boat was covered
with adult balani after being thirty-three
days in the tropical seas. The larves move