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
most have the disc and the innumerable arms striped and ringed with
various shades of grey and brown. Shall we get them? By all means if we
can. Touch one. Where is he now? Gone? Vanished into air, or into
stone? Not quite. You see that knot of sand and broken shell lying on
the rock, where your Dahlia was one moment ago. Touch it, and you will
find it leathery and elastic. That is all which remains of the live
Dahlia. Never mind; get your finger into the crack under him, work him
gently but firmly out, and take him home, and he will be as happy and as
gorgeous as ever to-morrow.
Let your Actiniæ stand for a day or two in the dish, and then, picking
out the liveliest and handsomest, detach them once more from their hold,
drop them into your vase, right them with a bit of stick, so that the
sucking base is downwards, and leave them to themselves thenceforth.
These two species (Mesembryanthemum and Crassicornis) are quite beautiful
enough to give a beginner amusement: but there are two others which are
not uncommon, and of such exceeding loveliness, that it is worth while to
take a little trouble to get them. The one is Dianthus, which I have
already mentioned; the other Bellis, the sea-daisy, of which there is an
excellent description and plates in Mr. Gosse’s “Rambles in Devon,” pp.
24 to 32.
It is common at Ilfracombe, and at Torquay; and indeed everywhere where
there are cracks and small holes in limestone or slate rock. In these
holes it fixes its base, and expands its delicate brown-grey star-like
flowers on the surface: but it must be chipped out with hammer and
chisel, at the expense of much dirt and patience; for the moment it is
touched it contracts deep into the rock, and all that is left of the
daisy flower, some two or three inches across, is a blue knot of half the
size of a marble. But it will expand again, after a day or two of
captivity, and will repay all the trouble which it has cost. Troglodytes
may be found, as I have said already, in hundreds at Hastings, in similar
situations to that of Bellis; its only token, when the tide is down,
being a round dimple in the muddy sand which firs the lower cracks of
rocks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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