cracks and corners, or the roots of seaweeds
seem equally indifferent to the moving fingers
and the staring eyes. Every red eye is
protected by a pile of spines; and a circle of
spines forrms a similar palisade around the
mouth. The sun-star is rarely left by the tide,
but the rosy five-lingered and the spring
cross-fish are exposed dry by almost every
tide. I have obtained sun-stars, sometimes
with twelve and sometimes with thirteen
fingers. The eye-palisade of the sun-star is
a circle of spines which lap over the eye like
the fingers of a hand; and around the
mouth there bristle two comb-like
semicircles of spines.

A fixed animal which may be taken as a
mark of the purple shore, is the purple-tipped
sea-urchin, which perforates chalk,
limestone, gneiss, and sandstone rocks. The sea-
urchins, sea-eggs, or sea-hedgehogs, are called
Echinida by the savans, and their word is
just the Greek one for hedgehogs. The sea-
hedgehogs are round balls of prickles. The
starry thorn-skins have an internal skeleton
of moveable pieces, with a skinny envelope,
sometimes chalky, and sometimes leathery,
while the body is radiated, and the digestive
canal symmetrical. The sea-hedgehogs are
different, their chalky skeleton forming a box,
sometimes like a sphere, and sometimes like
a disk, while their digestive canal is not
symmetrical. The thorn-balls of the sea
perforate lodgings for themselves in the rocks.
How they do it, is a question, in answer to
which the present state of science furnishes
us with nothing better than conjectures.
Several years ago, the British Association
collected a number of sea-hedgehogs in blocks
of limestone, and duly supplied them with
sea- water, in the hope of surprising their
secret, and witnessing their perforations.
Expectation was a tip-toe, and discussion was
rife, and the savans watched diligently; but
the obstinate little prickly-balls all died, and
gave no sign. Professor Valenciennes has
said justly, that nothing but mechanical
perforations have as yet been known in zoology.
The teeth and spines, no doubt, act mechanically
in boring the holes; but, while agreed
as to the fact, the difficulty of science is to
know how it is done. Hundreds of urchins
are found together in colonies, each in his
rock hole; and tiny little ones, the size of
peas, in small holes in the partitions, between
the lodgings of the big ones. M. Valentin
says, the gills of the echinoides, consisting of
five hollow lobules ramified like little trees,
are external, and situated upon the soft
membrane of the mouth. It is difficult to
see how, with such a structure, the teeth
could be used as the chief instruments for the
excavation of the hole. Physiological
discussions only add to the interest inspired by
the sea-urchins. However, whatever the
differences of opinion may be which divide
naturalists respecting the physiology of the
sea-side thorn-balls, there are none respecting
the prettiness and singularity of the appearance
of colonies of hundreds of them, when
their purple-tipped spines are seen under a
thin layer of limpid water in their shallow
lodges on the purple shore.

There grows upon the purple shore, a
stony plant which is called many-shaped
polymorpha, and Melobesia, after one of the
sea-nymphs of Hesiod. Melobesia is a purple
plant. The frond is round, attached or free,
indented or deeply cut, cylindrical and
branched, and coated with chalk, and the
clumsy branches are often merely
rudimentary. It may be said aside that the
description is scarcely flattering for a sea-
nymph attached to the rocks of quiet bays.
Melobesia nestles in her bosom an interesting
couchylion, and, but for this circumstance, I
should not notice the nymph, although aware
that she made an excellent cement to build the
Cathedral of Icolmkill. The many-shaped
chalk-plant is selected for the nest of a
bivalve shell, called Lima tenera, the mooring-
haven shell. The animal is thin, oblong,
with a little foot bearing a byssus, and with
a thick-fringed lip around the mouth, and
rows of tentacular threads around the edge
of the mantle. The shell is oval and thin, the
hinge is without teeth, the valves are nearly
equal, and the superior edge is straight and
longitudinal, while the valves gape in front
to let out the byssus. Lima is white, little,
and elegant. The haven-shell forms her little
nest in the many-shaped chalk-plant by
binding the clumsy branches together with a
cord, by filling up the spaces, and smoothing
the rough places with fine slime; finally,
by lining the inside with a tapestry of silky
threads. Few shells are more common,
insignificant, and uninteresting than the little
white haven-shell when the instincts of the
animal are unknown; none more interesting
when it is known that the creature whose
milk-white shell is less than an inch long, and
only about half an inch broad, was at once a
mason, a plasterer, a rope-spinner, and a
tapestry-weaver.

The number of the pages of my manuscript
tells me I have already used up my share of
space, without entering upon the red zone,
and without mentioning a twentieth of the
animals included in my notes. I shall hope,
by-and-by, to write out a few observations
upon the Red Shore—a wondrous theme for
volumes. Prior to leaving the purple shore,
I may mention a couple of curious
observations, for which I am indebted to
M. Milne-Edwards. He observed in certain
minute shell-fish, which have been separated
from the periwinkles because their mouths
are oval, and not round, the ambling trot of
horses characteristic of the Australian species.
The Hood (Calyptra), a tiny yellow limpet,
was detected by him upon loose shells of
Venus, hatching the young of her egg-cluster
under her foot.

A few words to express more adequately