Sea-urchins are eaten raw like oysters. They are cut in four parts, and the flesh taken out with a spoon; they are sometimes, but more rarely, dressed by boiling, and eaten from the shell like an egg, using long sippets of bread: hence the name of sea-eggs, which they bear in many countries. [Illustration: Plate IX.--Sea Urchins lodged in the rocks they have excavated.] Sea-eggs were a choice dish upon the tables of the Greeks and Romans; they were then served up with vinegar or hydromel, with the addition of mint or parsley. When Lentulus feasted the priest of Mars--the Flamen Martialis--this formed the first dish at supper. Sea-eggs also appeared at the marriage feast of the goddess Hebe. "Afterwards," says the poet, "came crabs and sea-urchins, which do not swim in the sea, but content themselves by travelling on the sandy shore." For my own part, I have only once partaken of sea-urchin, and it appeared to me to be food fit for the gods; but perhaps the circumstances sufficiently explain this dash of culinary enthusiasm. The Reserve Restaurant at Marseilles has not always been the vast stone edifice we now behold, backed majestically by the mountain, and fronting the sea on the promenade of the Corniche du Prado. In 1845 it rose quite at the entrance of the port, a small glass cage, suspended as it were by a magic thread between the heavens and the sea. From this aërial dwelling, overhanging with unheard-of audacity the waters which surrounded it on all sides, we gazed on the most wonderful prospect in the world, and reposed ourselves while enjoying this intoxicating scene, during which the ships were continually entering the port, passing under our very feet. It was in this enchanted palace that sea-urchins were served up, supported by the traditional bouillabaise. As I have said, it appeared to me delicious. Was it the Provençal dish, the savoury bouillabaise, which contributed to my appreciation of the humble sea-urchin of the Mediterranean? Was not the marvellous view which I enjoyed from the heights of my empyreum of glass the indirect cause of it? This is a tender and charming problem which I love to leave floating in the clouds, half evanescent, of my youthful recollections. HOLOTHURIA.