grow a fresh set, and then eat away as merrily as ever. His name, if you wish to consult so triumphant a hygeist, is Cucumaria Pentactes. Now what are those bright little buds, like salmon-colored Banksia roses half-expanded, sitting closely on the stone? Touch them; the soft part is retracted, and the orange flower of flesh transformed into a pale pink flower of stone. That is the Madrepore (Caryophyllia Smithii); one of our south coast varieties: and see, on the lip of the last one, which we have carefully scooped off with the chisel, two little pink towers of stone, delicately striated; drop them into this small bottle of sea-water, and from the top of each tower issues every half second--what shall we call it?--a hand or a net of finest hairs, clutching at something invisible to our grosser sense. “Doubtless you are familiar with the stony skeleton of our Madrepore, as it appears in museums. It consists of a number of thin calcareous plates standing up edgewise, and arranged in a radiating manner round a low centre.... This is but the skeleton; and though it is a very pretty object, those who are acquainted with it alone can form but a very poor idea of the beauty of the living animal.... Let it, after being torn from the rock, recover its equanimity; then you will see a pellucid gelatinous flesh emerging from between the plates, and little exquisitely formed and colored tentacula, with white clubbed tips fringing the sides of the cup-shaped cavity in the centre, across which stretches the oval disk marked with a star of some rich and brilliant color, surrounding the central mouth, a slit with white crenated lips, like the orifice of one of those elegant cowry shells which we put upon our mantel-pieces. The mouth is always more or less prominent, and can be protruded and expanded to an astonishing extent. The space surrounding the lips is commonly fawn color, or rich chestnut-brown, the star or vandyked circle rich red, pale vermilion, and sometimes the most brilliant emerald green, as brilliant as the gorget of a humming-bird.”[4]