A kind friend and brother zoologist, who happened to be near, called attention to the fact that the crimson stream flowed thickest near where my foot rested. On closely examining the spot pointed out, and turning over some fronds of Dulse, we came upon a small fleshy ball of a dark brown colour, from which there still issued a fluid of vivid crimson hue. Having placed this strange object in a bottle, I soon pronounced it to be an Aplysia, with whose full-length portrait, as represented in books, I had previously been made acquainted. The power which this animal possesses, under irritation, of spurting out a peculiar secretion, I also remembered to have seen mentioned by several writers on natural history. Although generally believed to be gentle and perfectly harmless, yet, as Professor Forbes observes, few molluscs have had a worse character than the Aplysiæ. From very ancient times they have been regarded with horror and suspicion; and many writers on natural history, conversant with them only through the silly stories of ignorant fishermen, have combined to hold them up as objects of detestation. To touch them, according to European prejudices, was sufficient to generate disease in the foolhardy experimenter; while Asiatics, reversing the consequences, maintained, perhaps with greater truth, that they met with instantaneous death when handled by man. Physicians wrote treatises on the effects of their poison, and discussed the remedies best adapted to neutralize it. Conspirators brewed nauseous beverages from their slimy bodies, and administered the potion confident of its deadly powers. Every nation in the world on whose shores the poor Sea-Hares crawled, accorded to them the attributes of ferocity and malignant virulence, although there never appears to have been the slightest foundation for a belief in their crimes. A specimen of the Aplysia that I had in my tank deposited a stringy coil of spawn, which closely resembled that of the Eolis, with the exception that the eggs, instead of being white, were of a reddish tint. CHAPTER XXII. Serpulæ and Sabellæ. [Illustration: 1, 2 SEA-URCHIN'S TEETH (Two illustrations.) 3 COMMON SEA CUCUMBER 4 COMMON RAZOR-SHELL 5 COMMON SERPULÆ, attached to a piece of stone.] XXII. With the exception of the Balani (Acorn-Barnacles), perhaps the most common objects to be met with at the sea-shore are the Serpulæ. Scarcely a rock, or shell, or bit of old china, or piece of wood, or rusty nail, lying near low-water mark, but is encrusted with colonies of these animals. I have a small twig of a tree by me, so thickly coated with Serpulæ as to obscure all signs of its ligneous character, except at each end. A shell also exhibits the same phenomenon, and well-nigh defies the most skilful observer to define its original form with any degree of certainty.