Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the ShoreKingsley, Charles
History
Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the Shore
Kingsley, Charles
Natural history -- Juvenile literature; Seashore biology -- Juvenile literature
PATELLA VULGARIS; (_a_) palate, natural size;
(_b_, _c_) Ditto, enlarged. 4. ECHINUS MILIARIS
(_See Plate_ 7); (_a_) teeth and digesting mill;
(_b_) suckers, enlarged; (_c_) spine and socket;
(_d_) shell denuded; (_e_) Pedicellaria. 5.
NEMERTES BORLASII (_See Plate_ 3); (_a_) head,
enlarged; (_b_) head expanded swallowing a
Terebella
9. 1. CUCUMARIA HYNDMANNI. 2. LITTORINA LITTOREA. 114
3. SIPHUNCULUS BERNHARDUS in shell of
TURRITELLA, with living BALANI
10. 1. SERPULA CONTORTUPLICATA. 2. HINNITES PUSIO. 129
3. DORIS REPANDA. 4. EOLIS PELLUCIDA. 5.
PHOLADIDÆA PAPYRACEA. 6. PHOLAS PARVA. 7.
FISSURELLA GRÆCA
11. 1. SYNGNATHUS LUMBRICIFORMIS. 2. SAXICAVA 163
RUGOSA; (_a_) Shell of SAXICAVA RUGOSA. 3.
NASSA RETICULATA
12. 1. PEACHIA HASTATA. 2. URASTER RUBENS 92
GLAUCUS;
OR,
THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE.
YOU are going down, perhaps, by railway, to pass your usual six weeks at
some watering-place along the coast, and as you roll along think more
than once, and that not over-cheerfully, of what you shall do when you
get there. You are half-tired, half-ashamed, of making one more in the
ignoble army of idlers, who saunter about the cliffs, and sands, and
quays; to whom every wharf is but a “wharf of Lethe,” by which they rot
“dull as the oozy weed.” You foreknow your doom by sad experience. A
great deal of dressing, a lounge in the club-room, a stare out of the
window with the telescope, an attempt to take a bad sketch, a walk up one
parade and down another, interminable reading of the silliest of novels,
over which you fall asleep on a bench in the sun, and probably have your
umbrella stolen; a purposeless fine-weather sail in a yacht, accompanied
by many ineffectual attempts to catch a mackerel, and the consumption of
many cigars; while your boys deafen your ears, and endanger your personal
safety, by blazing away at innocent gulls and willocks, who go off to die
slowly; a sport which you feel to be wanton, and cowardly, and cruel, and
yet cannot find in your heart to stop, because “the lads have nothing
else to do, and at all events it keeps them out of the billiard-room;”
and after all, and worst of all, at night a soulless _réchauffé_ of
third-rate London frivolity: this is the life-in-death in which thousands
spend the golden weeks of summer, and in which you confess with a sigh
that you are going to spend them.
Now I will not be so rude as to apply to you the old hymn-distich about
one who
“—finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do:”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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