Part 9

As the animal glides over the surface of the smooth weed, or over the inequalities of the rough rock, we see that its thin papery margin is frequently thrown up into waves, or folds, more or less distinctly revealing the inferior surface. The movement is very even and uniform, but the mode by which it is effected has not been satisfactorily explained. It has been asserted that certain staff-like bristles which project from the skin are used as oars, but this seems doubtful. It is certain that the whole body of the animal, as of the entire class to which it belongs, is densely clothed with minute vibratory cilia; and these, while they probably serve as organs of locomotion in freely swimming, do also without doubt make the whole skin a highly delicate and sensitive organ of touch.

It is asserted of the near allies of this species, and probably is equally true in this case, that if an individual be cut to pieces, every portion continues to live and feel, from whatever part of the body it may be taken; and what is not a little remarkable, each piece, even if it be the end of the tail, as soon as the first moment of pain and irritation has passed, begins to move in the same direction as that in which the entire animal was advancing, as if the body were actuated throughout by the same impulse; and, moreover, every division, even if it is not more than the eighth or tenth part of the creature, will become complete and perfect in all its organs.[63]

You would naturally expect to find the creature’s mouth at the front end, where the two tentacles are placed, and the group of eyes, but you would search for it there in vain. It is, in fact, situated most strangely in the very midst of the belly; that is, at the very centre of the inferior surface. And its structure is not less peculiar than its locality. It consists of an orifice, in the midst of which lies a sort of trumpet of enormous extent when opened, but when not in active use thrown into many folds, which, when the animal wishes to seize prey, are thrust forth, and being partly opened, take the appearance of many irregular tentacles radiating in all directions, at the centre of which is the œsophagus, leading immediately into a much ramified intestine. The name which is given to this elegant and interesting creature is _Eurylepta vittata_.[64]

But here is another member of the same class of strange creatures. On turning up a large flat stone, we expose to the light of day what might readily be mistaken for a very long thong of black leather, or rather a narrow strip of Indian-rubber, twisted and tied together, and coiled in all possible contortions. If you take hold of it, you find it not so easy to secure it as you expected, for it is excessively lubricous and soft, and withal so extensile and so tough, that you may pull one of the coils to almost any length without lifting the rest of the creature. However, you at last contrive to raise the slippery subject, and commit it safe to your tank at home, in which it will live an indefinite while; often invisible for weeks at a time, lying concealed under some of the stones, then seen perhaps in every corner of your aquarium at once, stretching from one stone to another, and coiling around every groin and projection, folded back upon itself, until in the multitude of convolutions you despair of finding head, tail, or any end at all to the uncouth vermin. You may soon discover the signs of its presence, however, in another way, for its voracity is great, and it is a ferocious foe to the tube-dwelling worms; such as the lovely _Sabellæ_ and _Serpulæ_, thrusting its serpent-like head into their tubes, and dragging out the hapless tenant to be quickly swallowed.

LONG-WORM.

The animal is named _Nemertes Borlasii_, or sometimes _Borlasia longissima_, in allusion to Dr. Borlase, the historian of Cornwall. It is also occasionally termed the Long-worm, _par excellence_, a name whose appropriateness will appear from the fact that it sometimes reaches a length of thirty feet, with a breadth of an eighth of an inch.

Mr. Kingsley has drawn the portrait of this ciliated worm; and if he has painted it in somewhat dark colours, and manifested more than a common measure of antipathy to it, we must confess that the physical and moral lineaments of the subject do in some degree justify the description. I will quote his vivid words.

ITS FORM AND HABITS.

“There are animals in which results so strange, fantastic, even seemingly horrible, are produced, that fallen man may be pardoned if he shrinks from them in disgust. That, at least, must be a consequence of our own wrong state; for everything is beautiful and perfect in its place. It may be answered, ‘Yes, in its place; but its place is not yours. You had no business to look at it, and must pay the penalty for intermeddling.’ I doubt that answer: for surely, if man have liberty to do anything, he has liberty to search out freely his Heavenly Father’s works; and yet every one seems to have his antipathic animal, and I know one bred from his childhood to zoology by land and sea, and bold in asserting, and honest in feeling, that all without exception is beautiful, who yet cannot, after handling, and petting, and admiring all day long every uncouth and venomous beast, avoid a paroxysm of horror at the sight of the common house-spider. At all events, whether we were intruding or not, in turning this stone, we must pay a fine for having done so; for there lies an animal, as foul and monstrous to the eye as ‘hydra, gorgon, or chimera dire,’ and yet so wondrously fitted for its work, that we must needs endure for our own instruction to handle and look at it. Its name I know not (though it lurks here under every stone), and should be glad to know. It seems some very ‘low’ Ascarid or Planarian worm. You see it? That black, slimy, knotted lump among the gravel, small enough to be taken up in a dessert-spoon. Look now, as it is raised and its coils drawn out. Three feet! Six--nine at least, with a capability of seemingly endless expansion; a slimy tape of living caoutchouc, some eighth of an inch in diameter, a dark chocolate-black, with paler longitudinal lines. Is it alive? It hangs helpless and motionless, a mere velvet string across the hand. Ask the neighbouring Annelids and the fry of the rock fishes, or put it into a vase at home, and see. It lies motionless, trailing itself among the gravel; you cannot tell where it begins or ends; it may be a strip of dead sea-weed, _Himanthalia lorea_, perhaps, or _Chorda filum_; or even a tarred string. So thinks the little fish who plays over and over it, till he touches at last what is too surely a head. In an instant a bell-shaped sucker mouth has fastened to its side. In another instant, from one lip, a concave double proboscis, just like a tapir’s (another instance of the repetition of forms), has clasped him like a finger, and now begins the struggle; but in vain. He is being ‘played’ with such a fishing-rod as the skill of a Wilson or a Stoddart never could invent; a living line, with elasticity beyond that of the most delicate fly-rod, which follows every lunge, shortening and lengthening, slipping and twining round every piece of gravel and stem of sea-weed, with a tiring drag such as no Highland wrist or step could ever bring to bear on salmon or trout. The victim is tired now; and slowly, yet dexterously, his blind assailent is feeling and shifting along his side, till he reaches one end of him; and then the black lips expand, and slowly and surely the curved finger begins packing him end foremost down into the gullet, where he sinks, inch by inch, till the swelling which marks his place is lost among the coils, and he is probably macerated into a pulp long before he has reached the opposite extremity of his cave of doom. Once safe down, the black murderer contracts again into a knotted heap, and lies like a boa with a stag inside him, motionless and blest.”[65]

FOOTNOTES:

[58] _Trachinus vipera_, represented by the lower figure in Plate XIII.

[59] So old Drayton, in his “Polyolbion” sings, quaintly enough, and with a noble defiance of grammar:--

“The Weever, which, although his prickles venom be, By fishers cut away, which buyers seldom see, Yet for the fish he bears, ’tis not accounted bad.”

[60] Since the above was written, the question has been set at rest, by Dr. Günther’s and Mr. Byerley’s actual discovery of poison-glands in connexion with these spines.

[61] _Gasterosteus spinachia_, represented by the upper figure in Plate XIII.

[62] It is depicted in Plate XIV.

[63] Jones’s _Animal Kingdom_, p. 90.

[64] This species, together with the following, is represented on Plate XV.; the latter coiled among the stones, and preparing to attack a _Serpula_.

[65] _Glaucus_, p. 103.

VI.

JUNE.

We are on the narrow shingle-beach of Maidencombe, or, sometimes, more familiarly, Minnicombe; one of the slight indentations of this line of coast, which, from the mouth of the Exe to Start Point, runs nearly north and south, and so looks right up-channel, and receives the full violence of the keen and blustering east winds.

Away down the gentle slope till we come to the line where the wavelets are kissing the rock, where the next step would put us into King Canute’s circumstances, where the sea is washing to and fro the shaggy weed, and just preventing it from assuming the shrivelled and blackened condition, into which the tufts a little above are fast falling under the baking powers of this June sun; and here, on these very weeds, now submerged, now dry, are crawling some uncouth beings of a dark liver colour or purple-brown hue. The creature passes by the name of Sea-hare;[66] a not inappropriate designation, for I have often seen it in postures when the resemblance to a couching hare was spontaneously suggested. Around Weymouth, where it is common, the fishermen and shore-boys call it the Sea-cow; which is not a bad hit, though not so happy as that of hare. In each case, the feature which strikes the imagination and suggests the comparison with the quadruped, is the pair of tentacles which stand erect, but a little diverging, from the back of the head, and which consist of an expanded lamina infolded at the base, and, as it were, cut off slantingly, so as to look like a hare’s ears. There are, indeed, two pairs of tentacles of similar structure; but the front pair are more commonly stretched forward horizontally, and held near the ground, so as to be much less conspicuous.

SEA-HARE.

The animal is one of the Sea-slugs, allied, not remotely, to the _Doris_ and the lovely _Eolis_, which occupied our attention some time ago. The order to which it belongs is, however, distinguished from them by having the breathing organs covered. In our Sea-hare these take the form of complicated leaflets, which are placed upon the middle of the back, and are protected by a broad plate of shell, somewhat like a watch-glass of irregular outline, very thin and transparent, and very brittle when dry. During life, this shelly plate is imbedded in the substance of the skin of the back, a thin layer of which clothes it; so thin that it can be very readily seen and felt notwithstanding. The mantle is much developed, forming two great irregular wing-like lobes, which stand up on each side of the body, and at pleasure either arch over the gill-shield, or are depressed, and widely expose it. It is reported that these mantle-lobes are capable of being used as swimming-fins, by their undulations; but I doubt the correctness of the observation.

When full-grown, our Sea-hare is three inches in length, and upwards of an inch high. Its body is of a slimy, fleshy, slug-like texture, varying much in colour; sometimes being dark olive-green, sometimes red-brown, sometimes deep purple, occasionally clouded with blue: sometimes the hue is uniform; at others, it is varied by light dots, or handsomely marked with dark rings enclosing white areas. Its figure is extremely versatile; so that, when crawling, it scarcely exhibits the same outline for two minutes together.

See what has happened. On dropping one of the slimy beasts into this phial of clear sea-water, it immediately resented the incarceration by beginning to pour out from beneath the lobes of the mantle a thin stream of fluid of the most royal purple hue, which freely diffused itself through the water. And see! it is still copiously exuding; and the whole contents of the bottle are now fast becoming of so fine and rich a tinge, as already to veil the form of the animal. Attempts have been made to employ this secretion in the arts; but the hue is fleeting. According to Cuvier, it assumes in drying the beautiful deep hue of the flower known as the sweet scabious, and remains long unaltered by exposure to the air. The purple tint is readily transferred to spirit, when the animal is immersed in it; the tincture retains the colour for a while, but ultimately becomes of a deep clear port-wine tint. Linen, dyed with the fluid, soon fades to a dingy brown.

It is a curious coincidence that this mollusk possesses a more recondite analogy with herbivorous mammalia, than a fleeting resemblance of form. Professor Grant has shown that it has three stomachs, like the ruminants. First, a short narrow gullet dilates into a large membranous crop; a curved bag, which is generally filled with pieces of coarse sea-weed. This large crop or paunch occupies the right side of the body, and opens laterally into the middle stomach, which is the smallest of all, and performs the part of the gizzard. Its coats are thickened; and the interior callous lining is besat with firm horny processes, in the form of rhomboidal plates or molar teeth, which serve to compress the softened vegetable matter transmitted in small portions from the first stomach. The third cavity of this complex apparatus is placed on the left side of the body; its interior surface is studded with sharp, horny spines, resembling canine teeth, to pierce and subdivide the coarse food, and thus prepare it for the action of the gastric juice and other fluids accessory to digestion, which enter the stomach from adjacent organs.[67]

The complexity of this structure has reference to the coarseness of the materials on which the animal subsists; the leathery fronds of the olive sea-weeds, which slowly and with difficulty yield their nutritive elements to the digestive functions.

This great, flabby Sea-Slug has a mythic history full of wild romance. Our species has been often called _depilans_, because the fluid which exudes from it was said to have the power of causing the hair to fall from the human head which it touched; and the common species of Southern Europe retains the appellation in the records of science. The Mediterranean fishermen have so great a horror of it that no bribes will induce them to handle it willingly; and they tell strange stories of wounds being produced, limbs being mortified, and even death itself being caused, by accidental or foolhardy contact with the potent creature.

Bohadsch has given, on the authority of personal observation, a minutely circumstantial account, which it seems a hyper-scepticism to doubt. When removed from the sea, and placed in a vessel, there exuded a large quantity of a limpid and somewhat mucilaginous fluid, exhaling a sweetish, sickening, peculiar smell: but besides this, and distinct from its purple secretion, the _Aplysia_ excreted also a milky liquor, formed in an internal conglobate gland, which seems to be analogous to the kidney of vertebrate animals. As often as he took the _Aplysia_ from the vase of sea-water and placed it on a plate with the view of more narrowly examining its structure, the room was filled with a nauseous odour, compelling his wife and brother to leave the room, lest sickness and vomiting should follow. He himself could scarcely endure it, and during the examination had repeatedly to go out and breathe a purer air. His hands and cheeks swelled after handling the creature for any length of time, and as often as it ejaculated its milky secretion; but he is uncertain whether the swelling of the face proceeded from the halitus merely, or from his having accidentally touched it with the hand besmeared with the liquid: probably the latter was the real cause, for when he purposely applied some of it to his chin, some hairs fell from the part.[68]

We may add to this account, as being in a measure confirmatory of its probability, the statement of a perfectly dependable naturalist, Mr. Charles Darwin, that he found a species of _Aplysia_ at St. Jago, one of the Cape Verd Isles, from which “an acrid secretion, which is spread over its body, causes a sharp stinging sensation, similar to that produced by the Physalia,[69] or Portuguese man-of-war.”[70] And yet I have myself freely handled _Aplysiæ_ in health and vigour, both here and on the coast of Jamaica, without perceiving the slightest unpleasant sensation.

ITS BAD CHARACTER.

But in the days of ancient Rome the poor Sea-hare had a far more terrific reputation. In those dark days of the Empire when no one’s life was secure against insidious assassination, and when professed poisoners were at the command of such as could afford to pay their hire, this mollusk was an essential element of the fatal draught. “Locusta used it to destroy such as were inimical to Nero; it entered into the potion which she prepared for the tyrant himself; and Domitian was accused of having given it to his brother Titus. To search after the Sea-hare was to render one’s-self suspected; and when Apuleius was accused of magic, because, forsooth, he had induced a rich widow to marry him, the principal proof against him was that he had hired the fishermen to procure him this fearful animal.”[71] He succeeded, however, in showing, to the satisfaction of his judges, that his object was merely the gratification of laudable scientific curiosity.

TUSK-SHELL.

Peering into the deep and narrow fissures with which the rocky ledge is cleft, we observe some shells which properly belong to the deep sea bottom, but have been doubtless washed into the shallow, by some heavy ground-swell, and left where we now see them. Here are several fragments, and one or two nearly perfect specimens, of what looks like an elephant’s tusk in miniature, but is really the shell of a small Gastropod mollusk commonly known as the Tusk-shell.[72] In colour, form, and curvature, the resemblance is complete, but the length of a perfect shell rarely exceeds an inch and a half, with a diameter of one-eighth of an inch at the larger end. The animal is remarkable for having long been a subject of dispute with learned zoologists as to its true affinities; by some being considered as a true mollusk allied to the Limpets, by others as a worm allied to the _Serpulæ_. Anatomy determines it to be rightly located by the former opinion, and yet the possession of red blood, and some other peculiarities belonging to the _Annelida_, indicate a curious relationship with this class, so that we may consider it as one of those interesting forms which link together two great divisions of the animal kingdom.

When the Tusk-shell is found alive, we rarely can see more of the soft parts than a sort of white cushion occupying the mouth of the shell, and occasionally protruding or receding, with a little conical point projecting from the centre of it. You might keep it for weeks, as I have done, and see no more, by the most assiduous watching, than this; but at some fortunate moment you might perchance see the whole foot, of which this little cone is the extremity, thrust far out of the cushion-like collar, when you would discern a wide lobed membrane, fringing the base of the foot, trumpet-like in shape, or resembling the blossom of a convolvulus, with the thick and pointed foot projecting from its centre like a pistil.

These sluggish white mollusks ordinarily live on the muddy sea-floor, or burrow in it, where they devour minuter animals, such as _Foraminifera_, and the spawn and larval forms of their fellow _Mollusca_. They are rarely taken alive at a less depth than ten fathoms.

TORBAY BONNET.

But we have also an example of a much rarer shell, the Torbay Bonnet, or Cap of Liberty.[73] The shape, which is exactly that of the ancient Phrygian bonnet, or the modern emblem of liberty, is sufficiently commemorated in all the appellations by which it is known, both scientific and popular. This specimen is but an empty shell, but the freshness of the colours, and the beautiful polish of the interior show that the animal cannot have been long dead, for the porcellaneous smoothness and gloss of shells very soon become defaced after their exposure by the death and decay of the soft parts. The interior of this shell is of a most lovely rose-pink, very glossy, and the exterior is nearly of the same hue, though this is concealed by a horny skin which closely invests it, and is covered with a shaggy pile that projects even beyond the edge, in the form of a ragged yellow fringe. This rough epidermis is of a hue varying from a bright yellow-olive to a dull wood-brown; it is frequently rubbed off in the upper parts, when the natural hue of the shell is there seen.

This species is rare enough, and large enough, and handsome enough to be a prize worth finding, when picked up in so fresh a condition as this; but, of course, it is more valuable when it occurs in a living state. But this scarcely ever happens except by dredging, or by trawling. I have frequently had it brought to me by trawlers both at Weymouth and Tenby, oftenest by the former, who get it in deep water, from thirty to fifty fathoms, on the western side of Portland.

The living animal is not unworthy of its elegantly painted house. Its colour is usually pale yellow, with a rose-pink mantle, bordered by a fine orange-coloured fringe. The head is large and swollen, furnished with tentacles, which carry the eyes at their bases. The tongue-ribbon carries seven rows of teeth, of which the central one differs in shape from the rest.

I have kept a specimen in the aquarium for a considerable time, with very little addition to my knowledge as the result. It remained adhering to the scallop shell on which it was found almost all the time I had it, occasionally shifting a hair’s-breadth to the one side or the other. Almost always the fringed edge of the shell was so closely applied to the support as absolutely to forbid intrusion; but now and then a very slight lifting of the edge all round gave me the narrowest possible peep at the broad cream-coloured foot adhering to its rest. Thus it went on tantalizing me, till after some months I lost it, I forget how.