Some favoured spot on the south or west coast may be known to our city-dwelling nature-lover, and thither he will hasten to spend week-ends, and, when he can, longer spells in the supreme delight of undisturbed communion with the things of Nature, apart from human "enterprise." In some cottage near the sea marsh, where an unpolluted stream joins the salt water, he has his accustomed lodging; his host, a cheery long-shore fisherman and handy boatman. Close by is the rising headland and rocky cliff facing the sea. The shore is strewn with rocks, and as the tide goes down long "reefs" are exposed, clothed with brown and green seaweeds. Here no man has intruded! When the water recedes still farther, pools and miniature caverns appear, edged with delicate feathery red-coloured seaweeds. Many small fishes, shrimps of various kinds, sometimes pale rainbow-tinted "squids" (one of the more delicate cuttle-fishes), are seen darting about the pools, changing their colour with lightning rapidity. The overhanging sides of the rock-pools give protection to gorgeously-coloured "sea-anemones" adhering to them. Here, also, are those exquisite ascidians--ill-described by the rough name "sea-squirt"--hanging from the rocks like drops of purest crystal in their transparency--for which naturalists use the prettier title "Clavellina." The nature-lover now turns one of the large flat slabs of rock lying in such a pool--well knowing what loveliness its under-side will reveal to his eyes. That under-side is studded with a dozen or two of the most exquisite gems of green and peach colour, ruby and yellow (Corynactis by name!), which, if the slab of stone is left beneath the water, expand and display each its circlet of brilliant little tentacles. They are sea-anemones no bigger than the precious stone in a signet-ring. Among them a bright salmon-coloured worm hastens with serpentine movement and the rippling strokes of a hundred feathery feet to escape from the unaccustomed light. A deep blood-red coloured prawn (Alpheus) darts from concealment and hastily buries itself in the sandy bottom of the pool, snapping its pincerlike claw with a sharp cracking sound. A couple of bivalved shells (Lima hians) which were concealed beneath the slab swim lazily round the pool by opening and closing their delicate white "valves"--an unusual kind of activity in such mussels, oysters, and clams--whilst a fringe of long orange-red tentacles trails in the water from each of them. The lifting of another rock may dislodge an "octopus"--or a huge brilliantly-coloured star-fish--or one of the rarer kinds of crab eager to avoid the observation of the octopus, of which it is the regular food. A spade pushed into the neighbouring sandbanks reveals heart-urchins, gorgeous sea-worms, and burrowing shell-fish and perhaps sand-eels. The human visitor--bending over these scenes of wonderment and perhaps venturing to transfer one or two only of the less familiar