Part 3

[6] _Nassa reticulata._ A figure of this species is seen in the lower left corner of Plate I.

[7] _Aporrhais pes-pelicani_, which the reader will see figured in the centre of Plate I.

[8] _Cypræa Europæa_, which is delineated in the lower right corner of Plate I.

[9] _Pecten opercularis_, of which see a group in Plate II.

[10] Parnell’s “Hermit.”

[11] For a description of the mode in which this action is performed, see _Devonshire Coast_, p. 50, _et seq._

[12] Quin died in 1766. Montagu, in 1803, says of this Pecten, that “it is known by the name of Frills or Queens,” with no allusion to the actor. The term “frill” obviously refers to the form of the shell.

[13] The principal figure in Plate III. represents this species (_Pentacta pentactes_) in the expanded condition described in the text.

[14] _Sipunculus punctatissimus_, figured in Plate III., to the left.

[15] _Sipunculus Bernhardus._

II.

FEBRUARY.

What will Babbicombe Bay yield us this fine February morning? One thing at least it yields, a magnificent coast view; and this is scarcely affected by the season. Let there be only a moderately clear atmosphere, a sky chequered with blue spaces and white wind-borne clouds, and snatches of sunshine interchanging with shadows,--which last there will be, of course, with such a sky,--and such a prospect cannot fail to please.

And, indeed, this noble sweep of precipitous coast can hardly be surpassed for beauty all round the sea-girt shores of Britain. The forms of the cliffs are imposing: their broad masses of vivid colour alternating,--the white compact limestone, the bright red sandstone, becoming almost scarlet as the sun shines out full, yet prevented from being tawdry by its harmonies with the various hues of green that crown it, by its own breadth of light and shadow, by its dimming tints as it softens and mellows into the purple of the distance; the panorama of blue hills rising and fading far inland, the Tors and heights of Dartmoor and Exmoor; and the ever-changing sea, now laughing in its brightness, now frowning and chafing in its wrath, filling so vast an area as it does from this vantage height;--these are the broader features of a scene which I will pause a moment to depict in detail, before I descend to the beach.

VIEW FROM BABBICOMBE CLIFF.

I take my stand on the margin of the cliff that overlooks Oddicombe, my feet upon the short soft turf, marked with fairy rings, the Dog’s Head just on my left,--a remarkable projection of grey lichened limestone from the very cliff-edge, which, seen from the opposite side, bears a curious resemblance to the head of a lop-eared, cross-grained cur; but from my point of view far more forcibly presents the appearance of the face of a night-capped old man, grinning with pain;--and a fine vertical, and in some places overhanging, precipice just on my right, in whose horizontal strata scores of noisy jackdaws find resting ledges. I see them as they sit in conscious security only a few yards below the margin, their sleek grey polls wagging, and their black eyes now and then upturned, as others of the cawing tribe fly in, and seek sitting-room. Some of the strata are strangely distorted at the western end; and here a narrow and somewhat perilous track leads down below the cliff to a grassy plateau at its foot. I scramble down, and sit on a stony shelf, overhung with sheets of ivy, and mark the bright green tufts of Sea-spleenwort springing out of the clefts, unfortunately too high to be reached.

The eye roams northward. At foot a rough broken ground slopes steeply down, shaggy with thickets of brake and bramble, and of furze which glows even now with golden blossom, varied with great tracts of broken fragments of limestone, blackened by the weather. At length this merges into a broad beach of shingle, snowy white, on which I see ladies reclining, with books and parasols, as if ’twere July instead of February. The sea bounds the beach with a line of still whiter surf, ever renewing itself as it breaks, with a sweet whispering sound. At the back is a series of most picturesque cliffs of the reddest sandstone, on the top of which I find in June the beautiful blossoms of the Purple Gromwell, one of the rarest of British flowers. The ground at the summit is very uneven; and so my eye rests on the broad opposite slopes of Woodleigh Vale, chequered with fields and hedgerows, among which the ploughmen are busy, and the teams are toiling up the steep furrows.

The formation suddenly changes again, and the limestone is seen in the fine rounded projection of Petit Tor, whose front of white marble has been laid bare by the quarriers. Beyond this is the ruddy sandstone once more rising into lofty headlands of noble shapes. At the foot of one of these an isolated rock, called, from its figure, the Bell, stands in the sea, where, even while I am writing this paper, a mournful tragedy has occurred. Two Babbicombe fishermen went out at midnight to examine their crab-pots at this rock, and did not return. The morning revealed the keel of the boat bottom-up, moored by the pot-lines, and one poor fellow entangled by his feet in the same lines, while the sea washed his hair about the surface. The other has not yet been found.

Farther on, the bluff Ness marks the harbour of Teignmouth, and as the sunlight falls on the white villas that stud the opposite side, the scene looks attractive. Then the cliff-line rapidly diminishes in height as it recedes, and the heads of Dawlish project, and we see no more till at Exmouth the land trends to the eastward, and from its white terraces faintly seen in the slanting sun now, but to stand out full and clear in the afternoon, we follow the bold, varying, beauteous coast, beauteous in its outline, but dim in its detail, for some twenty miles farther, till the straining eye finally fails to discern it somewhere between Lyme and Bridport; though Portland itself is sometimes to be seen, and I have myself made it well out, stretching far forth upon the wide eastern horizon of blue sea. Now, however, along that shining line nothing is discernible but a white speck or two, and yon ocean steamer that passes down the Channel, with a long line of black smoke on the low sky behind her.

I forsake my sheltered seat, and climb to the down, making my way towards the left, in order to see the prospect to the right. Here is a track winding down the broken slope, leading through roods of the round leaves of the fragrant Butterburr. A month ago the whole air was loaded with the delicious perfume of its lilac blossom. I make my way, slippery and tenacious enough just now, along by the hedge of a field, till I come to the edge of an abrupt perpendicular cliff. How beautiful from hence is the sweet hamlet of Babbicombe the Nether! The rugged masses of Black Wall project from the foot of the slope into the sea, dividing Oddicombe from Babbicombe beach. Beyond it is the latter, a sweeping curve of pebbles and then of larger boulders, backed by an amphitheatre of picturesque fishing huts, and elegant villas, half hid in bowery plantations and woods, with peeps of lawns and gardens, all occupying the steep sides of the bay, up to the summit of the downs.

Beyond the beach, fine dark rock masses again project; and farther still, the prospect is abruptly shut in by a magnificent vertical cliff of great height, the northern boundary of that lovely spot of renown, Anstey’s Cove.

These features, which I feebly essay to paint with many successive words, and multitudes of others which I must fain leave untouched, the eye drinks in at once, grasping the whole grand and beautiful picture at a glance, steeped as it is in loveliness. Those who have seen it may possibly find an aid to memory in recalling it in these details of mine, for I write with the scene before me; those who have not will probably find little of interest in them.

BABBICOMBE BEACH.

It is at the farther end of yonder beach that we must commence our marine explorings to-day; there, where the pebbles at the lowest water-line merge into larger dark stones, and a little on this side of the bounding rocks. We might get down by this path to Oddicombe beach, scramble over Black Wall, and so make our way along Babbicombe beach to the spot; but the state of the tenacious soil at this season makes such a descent unpleasant. There is a better road to the eastward, which winds among the villas, and descends direct to the spot we seek. Let us therefore pursue our walk over the downs, along the margin of the cliff, enjoying fresh aspects of the coast view as we proceed, till we reach the road.

We are among the olive-coated stones at the verge of the far-receded tide, among which the springs from the cliffs having broken out from various points in the shingle beach, are making for themselves tortuous channels on their way to the deserting sea. Their water, originally fresh of course, has, by the time it arrives here, become so brackish by washing the salt stones and sea-weeds, that the sand-hoppers and worms which inhabit the hollows under the stones are bathed in it with impunity, though, in general, immersion in fresh water is fatal to marine animals. Great tufts of bladder wrack and other _Fuci_ spring from the lower stones, and now lie flaccid about, awaiting the returning tide to erect them and wave their leathery leaves to and fro. Broad fronds of _Ulva_, too, like tissue paper of the tenderest green, irregularly crumpled and waved, and nibbled and gnawed into thousands of holes, lie crisp and tempting; and tufts of a darker, duller green, and others of purple-brown, and others again of rosy crimson, stud these rough stones, and vary their ruggedness with elegance and beauty; a beauty, however, far more appreciable, and far more worthy of admiration, if we could look upon it when the flowing tide creeps up, with its calm water clear as crystal, and covers the many-hued parterre, softening and displaying the graceful outlines and the brilliant colours. Then, too, those tiny creatures would be seen agilely swimming from weed to weed, or lithely twining among the fronds, which now we have to search for in their recluse hiding-places under these rocks.

Selecting a stone which experience teaches us is a likely one---and only experience can teach this, though in general I may say that the heaviest and flattest beneath, those which appear to have been long undisturbed, and especially those which, instead of being imbedded in the soil, rest on other stones in such a partial way that there is room for free ingress and egress to minute creatures beneath, and which have a broad surface to which they may cling in congenial darkness, are the most promising---selecting, I say, such a stone, we place both hands beneath one side, and heave with all our might to turn it bodily over. We must be careful, for many of these stones are so beset with the small shells of _Serpula triquetra_, that they cannot be handled with impunity. This is a worm which makes a tubular pipe for its defence, of hard shell, adhering to the rock throughout its length; the tube enlarges a little as it grows, and its most recent extremity, which is brilliantly white and clean, is defended by the projecting extremity of a ridge which runs along the back of the shell, the point of this ridge forming a very sharp needle-like prickle, which, as we apply our hands beneath the stone to lift, terribly cuts the fingers. On some stones we find hundreds of these treacherous shells, set as thickly as they can stand, and covering large patches; on others they are scattered, and some are quite free from them. In an aquarium the little worms protrude their breathing fans very constantly, and are pretty, though not conspicuous objects, being varied with bright blue, grey, and white. Pretty as they are, however, the collector wishes them further a hundred times during his collecting, for, in such an expedition as this, he is fortunate indeed if he come home without half of his fingers gashed with deep incisions, smarting from the sea-water, and all the slower to heal from the skin of the finger-tips being worn to thinness in handling the stones.

But these are trifles; the fortune of war; amply compensated by the joy of victory, when we succeed in capturing some rare or lovely creature, to be displayed in triumph within the glass walls of a prison. Such an one is this beauty, which is lurking in an angle of the block we have just overturned. It needs a sharp eye to detect it; for we see no beauty yet, nothing but a little lump of whitish jelly, dappled with orange-yellow, not bigger than the half of a split pea, clinging close to the stone. It requires some care to get it up without crushing; the end of a toothpick, or a penknife, or a bit of stick cut to a point, must be inserted under it; thus we lift it, and drop it into the ready phial of clear water. It opens instantly, sprawling even before it reaches the bottom, where it at once begins to crawl, and we detect in our prize the lovely little Triope.[16]

THE TRIOPE.

As it swiftly glides up the glass, we see that it has an oblong body of a pellucid white hue, curiously beset with finger-like appendages. There is a row of some half-dozen or so fringing the front of the head; and down a line on each side of the body, margining the mantle, there is a row of larger ones, and all these are tipped with the richest orange colour. Just behind the frontal points there are two club-shaped organs, which start up out of holes, the sides of which form sheaths for them, into which they can be withdrawn at the will of the animal. These organs carry a number of narrow plates set parallel to each other, diagonally pointing backwards and downwards. Doubtless, this structure is intended to augment the sensitive powers of these curious organs, which are understood to be the tentacles.

Then, in the middle line of the back, but placed a little nearer the tail than the head, there is an orifice, which is the vent; remarkable because the breathing organs are arranged partly around it. There are three tiny leaves cut like the fronds of a fern, which stand up over the orifice, and are endowed with the power of absorbing for the purposes of respiration the oxygen of the air commingled in the water.

But here is an animal which possesses all these peculiarities of structure, displayed on a much larger scale. It is a fine specimen of the Sea Lemon,[17] which we oftener find clinging to the sides of perpendicular rocks, or beneath projecting ledges, than on the undersides of stones. This fellow is two and a half inches long, and an inch and a quarter or more broad; but I have met with individuals much larger than he. Its back is rounded, and its outline generally reminds one of the half of a lemon cut longitudinally. The resemblance is heightened, too, by the round warts with which the whole surface is studded, and by the colour, a yellow more or less pure, often, however, clouded, as in this instance, with purple, by which its beauty is much enhanced.

The mantle, in this Doris, reaches down to the foot on all sides, and covers the head, and is not furnished with any appendages. The tentacles, which are plated, as in the Triope, pierce through the mantle, and are sheathed; the gill plumes are large and ample feather-like organs, eight in number, forming a complete circle round the orifice, in the manner of a beautiful expanded flower.

As the Doris crawls along, it now and then lifts and puckers the edge of the mantle, and displays its under surface and that of the foot, which are of a rich orange-scarlet hue.

THE CROWNED EOLIS.

But we have turned a stone beneath which lurk several specimens of a much lovelier creature yet. I see by the gleams of crimson and azure which shine out from it, that it must be the Crowned Eolis.[18] It looked a little heap of fibrous semi-pellucid flesh when out of water, and, like the Triope, must be immersed to display its beauties. Now in the phial of water, how elegant it is! Its body is long and slender, tapering away to an almost imperceptible point behind, of a clear translucent white. The head forms two long smooth taper tentacles, which wave hither and thither as the creature gracefully glides along; and besides these it has two other tentacles, distinguished as the dorsal pair, resembling, in their position and in their structure, those of the Doris and Triope, but not sheathed.

The chief glory of this exquisite animal, however, is in its breathing organs. These consist of clusters of finger-shaped papillæ, set transversely across the back, in about six rows, with the middle line of the back free. Each of these papillæ is pellucid, with a central core of the richest crimson, while a very brilliant flush of steel blue is reflected from the surface, and the tip is opaque white. The combination of these hues has a most charming effect.

You would scarcely suppose such lovely creatures were fierce and carnivorous; but they are the most determined enemies of the Sea Anemones. This beautiful Eolis I have often seen assaulting an Anemone, ferociously tearing away its tentacles, or gnawing great holes in its side, and, when touched, stiffening and erecting all its brilliant papillæ, as the porcupine does its quills.

All these creatures are Mollusca very closely allied to the Cowry and the Trochus which we lately examined, but destitute of a shell. The exposure of the breathing organs is a distinguishing character (these being more commonly, in the order, concealed in a cavity), whence they are called _Nudibranchiata_, or Naked-gilled Mollusks.

At this season, wherever we find the animals themselves, we may with confidence expect to find their spawn. This is deposited in masses, which possess characteristic forms. Thus this roll, which looks as if you had made a thin ribbon of paste, half an inch wide, and rolled it into a loose scroll of two or three turns, and then affixed it by its edge to the under side of a stone, is the spawn-mass of the Sea Lemon. And here is a much more elegant scroll, of which the constituent is a slender thread, twisted into a frilled or figure-8 form, as it goes on to make the spire.[19] This has been laid by the beautiful Crowned Eolis. If you examine either of these masses with a lens, you will see that it is composed of a vast multitude of white eggs, suspended in a clear jelly, in which they are arranged in transverse rows, giving the opaque appearance to what would else be colourless and transparent.

EGGS OF NUDIBRANCHS.

The eggs, watched day by day under a good microscopic power, as they advance towards maturity, present a most interesting object of study. The yolk, which at first nearly fills the egg-shell, soon becomes a little elongated, with one end diagonally truncated, or, as it were, cut off obliquely; the truncated end then becomes two-lobed, “each lobe exhibiting an imperfect spiral, and having its margin ciliated. The now animated being is seen to rotate within its prison. Shortly the lobes enlarge, and a fleshy process, the rudimentary foot, is observed to develop itself a little behind them, on the medial line; a shell closely investing the inferior portion of the embryo, the lobes and rudimentary foot being uppermost. The shell rapidly increases, and assumes a nautiloid form; afterwards the foot displays, attached to its posterior surface, a circular operculum, which is opposed to the mouth of the shell. The lobes now expand into two large, flattened, ovate appendages, with very long vibratile cilia around the margins; and the larvæ are at length mature. The whole mass of spawn now presents the utmost animation. Hundreds of these busy atoms are seen, each within its transparent, membranous cell, rotating with great agility and ceaseless perseverance, the cilia all the while vigorously vibrating on the margins of the outstretched lobes. The membranous chorion [or transparent egg-shell], which by this time has become enlarged, ultimately gives way, no longer able to resist the perpetual struggle within; and the liberated larva, wending its way through the shattered shreds of the general envelope, boldly trusts itself to the open trackless water, where, doubtless, thousands and tens of thousands perish ere they find a fitting resting-place, some being swept away by resistless currents, others falling a prey to ever-watchful and innumerable enemies.

“When the larva is at rest, the oral lobes are pulled back into the shell, and the foot being drawn down, brings along with it the operculum, which closes the orifice. But when in action, the whole of these parts project beyond the opening of the shell, the foot lying back against the spire; and the oral lobes inclining forward, their cilia commence to vibrate, and the larva, with the mouth of the shell upwards, moves through the water with lively action, sinking or rising, or advancing onwards at its pleasure.”[20]

SPAWN OF EOLIS.

The fecundity of these mollusca is immense. An _Eolis papillosa_ of moderate size in one of my aquaria, deposited successively nine strings of spawn between March 20th and May 24th. The strings were exactly alike in length and arrangement; each comprised about 105 convolutions, and each convolution 200 eggs, while each egg contained on an average two embryos. Thus the astonishing number of 378,000 embryos proceeded from this one animal in about two months.

Step by step we have crept along the beach, turning stones as we went, till we are come to the great masses of sandstone rock. Here are the Purples[21] by hundreds, with their strong massive shells, some of them pure white, which, however, becomes dingy with age, some banded with brown, and some, especially the young and half-grown ones, painted with a dull but soft purplish hue. The older specimens have the inner surface of the lip tinged with a rich rosy purple. This tint on the shell we may receive as the advertisement of the colorific property that resides within, a sort of sign-board to tell us that this is the “genuine” purple-shell. And there is little doubt that it is one of those enumerated by Pliny, as used by the ancients for obtaining the renowned dye of Tyre: though the principal, and that which yielded the richest hue, was probably the _Murex trunculus_, a common Mediterranean shell, which does not extend to our shores.

My readers are, I dare say, familiar with the pretty myth which professes to embody the discovery of the purple dye. The Tyrian Hercules was one day walking with his sweetheart along the shore, followed by her lap-dog, when the playful animal seized a shell that had just been washed up on the beach. Its lips were presently dyed with a gorgeous purple tint, which was traceable to a juice that was pressed out of the shell-fish. The lady was charmed with the colour, and longed to have a dress of it; and, as wishes under such circumstances are laws, the enamoured hero set himself to gratify her, and soon succeeded in extracting and applying the dye, which afterwards became so famous. I have elsewhere[22] recorded my own experiments on the stain yielded by the _Purpura_ before us, with the remarkable changes through which it passes before the sunlight fully brings out the colour. The use of cochineal makes us independent of molluscan dyes, and the matter is merely one of antiquarian interest, or a question of zoological chemistry.

EGGS OF DOG-WINKLE.