Once safe down, the black murderer slowly contracts again into a knotted heap, and lies, like a boa with a stag inside him, motionless and blessed. There; we must come away now, for the tide is over our ankles; but touch, before you go, one of those little red mouths which peep out of the stone. A tiny jet of water shoots up almost into your face. The bivalve (Saxicava rugosa), who has burrowed into the limestone knot (the softest part of the stone to his jaws, though the hardest to your chisel), is scandalized at having the soft mouths of his siphons so rudely touched, and taking your finger for some bothering Annelid, who wants to nibble him, is defending himself; shooting you, as naturalists do humming-birds, with water. Let him rest in peace; it will cost you ten minutes’ hard work and much dirt to extract him; but if you are fond of shells, secure one or two of those beautiful pink and straw-colored scallops (Hinnites pusio) who have gradually incorporated the layers of their lower valve with the roughness of the stone, destroying thereby the beautiful form which belongs to their race, but not their delicate color. There are a few more bivalves, too, adhering to the stone, and those rare ones, and two or three delicate Mangeliæ and Nassæ are trailing their graceful spires up and down in search of food. That little bright red and yellow pea, too, touch it--the brilliant colored cloak is withdrawn, and, instead, you have a beautiful ribbed pink cowry (Cypræa Europæa), the only European representative of that grand tropical family. Cast one wondering glance, too, at the forest of zoophytes and corals, Lepraliæ and Flustræ, and those quaint blue stars, set in brown jelly, which are no zoophytes, but respectable mollusks, each with his well-formed mouth and intestines (Botrylli), but combined in a peculiar form of communism, of which all one can say is that one hopes they like it. From the bare rocks above high-water mark, down to abysses deeper than ever plummet sounded, is life, everywhere life; fauna after fauna, and flora after flora, arranged in zones, according to the amount of light and warmth which each species requires, and to the amount of pressure which they are able to endure. The crevices of the highest rocks, only sprinkled with salt-spray in spring-tides and high gales, have their peculiar little univalves, their crisp lichen-like sea-weed, in myriads; lower down, the region of the Fuci (bladder-weeds) has its own tribes of periwinkles and limpets; below again, about the neap-tide mark, the region of the Corallines and Algæ furnishes food for yet other species who graze on its watery meadows; and beneath all, only uncovered at low spring-tide, the zone of the Laminariæ (the great tangles and ore-weeds) is most full of all of every imaginable form of life. CRABS, PRAWNS, AND LOBSTERS --PHILIP HENRY GOSSE