in one or two cases detected a faint odour of lemon; but in most instances all sweet odour was overpowered by the strong scent of burning bones, or other animal substance, which the hornwrack gave out in the flame. This and the other hornwracks were formerly included under the name of Sea-mat; hence Linnæus gave the genus their scientific name from the Saxon Austrian, "to weave."

66

The narrow-leaved Hornwrack (Flustra truncata) much resembles this, but it is of a thinner and more papery substance, and its segments are narrower at the base. Though very common in deep water on the Scottish coast, and on the northern shores of England, it is less generally distributed than the broad-leaved kind. Then there is a pretty yellowish-brown species, called Flustra carbasea, not uncommon on some coasts. The polypes in this species have about twenty-two tentacles, on which Dr. Grant remarks, They are nearly a third of the length of the body, and there appears to be about 50 ciliæ on each side of a tentaculum, making 2,200 ciliæ on each polypus. In this species there are more than 18 cells in a square line, or 1,800 in a square inch of surface and the branches of an ordinary specimen present about 10 square inches of surface, so that a common specimen of the Carbasea presents more than 18,000 polypi, 396,000 tentacula, and 39,600,000 ciliæ."

;

Some sea-mats form patches on our common marine plants, some inches in length, and they may be seen by the naked eye to be composed of a mass of cells. The membranous species (Flustra membranacea), so common on the fronds of the Laminaria, and different species of Fucus, forming

on their surfaces a gauze-like crust, is exquisitely beautiful under the microscope. The Rev. David Landsborough and Dr. Johnston have seen a specimen of this, five feet in length by eight inches in breadth; and Dr. Landsborough counted the cells on every square inch, each of which cells had been inhabited by a living polype, and found that this "web of silvery lace" had been the work and the dwelling-place of above "two millions of industrious, and doubtless happy inmates; so that this single colony, on a submarine island, was about equal in number to the population of Scotland."

Many are the wondrous zoophytes belonging to our own seas, and strewed about among the refuse of the ocean on our shores, which we must here leave unnoticed. Though familiarly acquainted with the objects named in this paper, yet the author is indebted for many of its details to the interesting facts discovered and accumulated by Dr. George Johnston. His valuable work on the British Zoophytes cannot be read by any intelligent person without wonder and delight. To many it has opened a new world of ideas. Viewing the subject with the feelings of a philosopher, a poet, and a Christian, his book is a source of gratification both to the scientific and the unlearned reader.

The verses which conclude the chapter were written by Calder Campbell, for this little volume: "The sea! the sea magnificent,

On which we love to pore,
As if it were one huge extent
Of sage but secret lore;

Which, though upon the lesson bent,
Perplexes more and more.

Look down into its depths, where life
In such strange shapes is seen,
That he who thinks that human strife
On earth hath only been,

Will turn again to landward plain,
And own it more serene.

Life in each fish and finny creature
That revels in the flood;

Life in each tangled weed, by nature
Form'd for a curious brood:

Life in each shell of varied feature,
With many a tint imbued.

The spars that glitter up from chasms
Where zoophytes abound;

The shells, flung out from darksome pits,
To shine on sun-struck ground;
The plants that grow deep down below,
Whence comes a solemn sound :-

Those spars, shells, plants, have each and ail
A God-given life within;

And solemn thoughts, in thickness fall
Upon my spirit, when

I think on man's superior claim

To grace, with all his sin.

But mysteries hide in heavenly love

As in the dark deep wave;

And all we know, or need to know

Of life, and of the grave,

Is that God gave to man a soul
For his own Son to save.

Nor, without object, gifted He

With life, those groups that grow
Like woodlands, in the quaint old sea,
Whose every bud and bough
Teems with existence; why, or how,
We cannot guess or know.

Enough to know that they, like us,
Were form'd by power divine;
Enough to know, that weal and woe,
That darkness and sunshine
Have each their time of reign below,
To end when He makes sign."

CHAPTER V.

VARIOUS COMMON OBJECTS OF THE SHORE.

"Now is it pleasant on a summer eve,

When a broad shore retiring waters leave,
Awhile to wait upon the firm fair sand,
When all is calm at sea, and still at land,
And there the ocean's produce to explore,
As floating by, or rolling on the shore;
Those living jellies which the flesh inflame,
Fierce as a nettle, and from that its name;
Some in huge masses, some that you may bring
In the small compass of a lady's ring.
Figured by hand divine—there's not a gem
Wrought by man's art can be compared with them;
Soft, brilliant, tender, through the wave they glow,
And make the moonbeam brighter where they flow."

CRABBE.

ONE of the most frequent objects on our shores is a yellowish ball, composed of a number of little bladders, of about the size of a pea, and of a membranous and tough material. These balls skim over the stones or sands on a rough day, never stopping till they fall into some cavity, or lodge themselves against the side of a boat or pier, where they often lie in numbers. They are the egg-shells of the common whelk, and when first deposited, are soft and full of a cream-like substance. They shortly harden, and the bladders then become full of small roundish eggs. There are sometimes as many as a hundred eggs in each case, though not more than four or five on an average come to perfection. The young animals,

when first hatched, are covered with a minute shell, which they enlarge as they grow older. The ball is often as large as an orange, and contains a great number of these egg-cases. One of an ordinary size was found by the author to consist of as many as two thousand five hundred. This mass of eggs is called on the coast bladder-chain, oysterspat, sea-rose, or soap-ball or wash-ball. Ellis says of it, that in his time, sailors used it as soap, to wash their hands.

Our engraving will at once remind all accustomed to the sea-side, of another object on which

they have often looked; at which, perchance, in childhood, they have wondered much, doubting whether that olive-green leathery bag were not some kind of sea-weed. The Mermaid's-purse, or the Fairy-purse, was the name by which they called it in those days; and it is the egg-case of some of the several kinds of Ray-fish, or skate. It is open at both ends to admit the sea-water, and if we pick up any of the specimens so numerous during the months of September or October, we