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
Polypes, I must refer you to Johnston, or, failing him, to Landsborough;
and go on, to beg you not to despise those pink, or grey, or white lumps
of jelly, which will expand in salt water into exquisite sea-anemones, of
quite different forms from any which we have found along the rocks. One
of them will certainly be the Dianthus, {170} which will open into a
furbelowed flower, furred with innumerable delicate tentacula; and in the
centre a mouth of the most delicate orange, the size of the whole animal
being perhaps eight inches high and five across. Perhaps it will be of a
satiny grey, perhaps pale rose, perhaps pure white; whatever its colour,
it is the very maiden queen of all the beautiful tribe, and one of the
loveliest gems with which it has pleased God to bedeck this lower world.
[Picture: Plate 7: Echinus Miliaris etc.]
These and much more you will find on the scallops, or even more
plentifully on any lump of ancient oysters; and if you do not dredge, it
would be well worth your while to make interest with the fish-monger for
a few oyster lumps, put into water the moment they are taken out of the
trawl. Divide them carefully, clear out the oysters with a knife, and
put the shells into your aquarium, and you will find that an oyster at
home is a very different thing from an oyster on a stall.
You ought, besides, to dredge many handsome species of shells, which you
would never pick up along the beach; and if you are conchologizing in
earnest, you must not forget to bring home a tin box of shell sand, to be
washed and picked over in a dish at your leisure, or forget either to
wash through a fine sieve, over the boat’s side, any sludge and ooze
which the dredge brings up. Many—I may say, hundreds—rare and new shells
are found in this way, and in no other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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