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Meanwhile, without dredging, you may find a good deal on the shore. In the spring Doris bilineata comes to the rocks in thousands, to lay its strange white furbelows of spawn upon their overhanging edges. Eolides of extraordinary beauty haunt the same spots. The great Eolis papillosa, of a delicate French grey; Eolis pellucida (?) (Plate X. fig. 4), in which each papilla on the back is beautifully coloured with a streak of pink, and tipped with iron blue; and a most fantastical yellow little creature, so covered with plumes and tentacles that the body is invisible, which I believe to be the Idalia aspersa of Alder and Hancock.
At the bottom of the rock pools, behind St. Leonard's baths, may be found hundreds of the snipe's feather Anemone (Sagartia troglodytes), of every line; from the common brown and grey snipe's feather kind, to the white-horned Hesperus, the orange-horned Aurora, and a rich lilac and crimson variety, which does not seem to agree with either the Lilacinia or Rubicunda of Gosse. A more beautiful living bouquet could hardly be seen, than might be made of the varieties of this single species, from this one place.
On the outside sands between the end of the Marina and the Martello tower, you may find, at very low tides, great numbers of a sand- tube, about three inches long, standing up out of the sand. I do not mean the tubes of the Terebella, so common in all sands, which are somewhat flexible, and have their upper end fringed with a ragged ring of sandy arms: those I speak of are straight and stiff, and ending in a point upward. Draw them out of the sand - they will offer some resistance - and put them into a vase of water; you will see the worm inside expand two delicate golden combs, just like old-fashioned back-hair combs, of a metallic lustre, which will astonish you. With these combs the worm seems to burrow head downward into the sand; but whether he always remains in that attitude I cannot say. His name is Pectinaria Belgica. He is an Annelid, or true worm, connected with the Serpulea and Sabellae of which I have spoken already, and holds himself in his case like them, by hooks and bristles set on each ring of his body. In confinement he will probably come out of his case and die; when you may dissect him at your leisure, and learn a great deal more about himthereby than (I am sorry to say) I know.
But if you have courage to run out fifteen or twenty miles to the Diamond, you may find really rare and valuable animals. There is a risk, of course, of being blown over to the coast of France, by a change of wind; there is a risk also of not being able to land at night on the inhospitable Hastings beach, and of sleeping, as best you can, on board: but in the long days and settled fine weather of summer, the trip, in a stout boat, ought to be a safe and a pleasant one.
On the Diamond you will find many, or most of those gay creatures which attract your eye in the central row of tanks at the Zoological Gardens: great twisted masses of Serpulae, (26) those white tubes of stone, from the mouth of which protrude pairs of rose-coloured or orange fans, flashing in, quick as light, the moment that your finger approaches them or your shadow crosses the water.