第34章

You will dredge, too, the twelve-rayed sun-star (Solaster papposa), with his rich scarlet armour; and more strange, and quite as beautiful, the bird's foot star (Palmipes membranaceus), which you may see crawling by its thousand sucking-feet in the Crystal Palace tanks, a pentagonal webbed bird's foot, of scarlet and orange shagreen. With him, most probably, will be a specimen of the great purple heart-urchin (Spatangus purpureus), clothed in pale lilac horny spines, and other Echinoderms, for which you must consult Forbes's "British Star-fishes:" but perhaps the species among them which will interest you most, will be the common brittle-star (Ophiocoma rosula), of which a hundred or so, I can promise, shall come up at a single haul of the dredge, entwining their long spine- clad arms in a seemingly inextricable confusion of "kaleidoscope" patterns (thanks to Mr. Gosse for the one right epithet), purple and azure, fawn, brown, green, grey, white and crimson; as if a whole bed of China-asters should have first come to life, and then gone mad, and fallen to fighting. But pick out, one by one, specimens from the tangled mass, and you will agree that no China- aster is so fair as this living stone-flower of the deep, with its daisy-like disc, and fine long prickly arms, which never cease their graceful serpentine motion, and its colours hardly alike in any two specimens. Handle them not,meanwhile, too roughly, lest, whether modesty or in anger, they begin a desperate course of gradual suicide, and, breaking off arm after arm piecemeal, fling them indignantly at their tormentor. Along with these you will certainly obtain a few of that fine bivalve, the great Scallop, which you have seen lying on every fishmonger's counter in Hastings. Of these you must pick out those which seem dirtiest and most overgrown with parasites, and place them carefully in a jar of salt water, where they may not be rubbed; for they are worth your examination, not merely for the sake of that ring of gem-like eyes which borders their "cloak," lying along the extreme out edge of the shell as the valves are half open, but for the sake of the parasites outside: corallines of exquisite delicacy, Plumulariae and Sertulariae, dead men's hands (Alcyonia), lumps of white or orange jelly, which will protrude a thousand star-like polypes, and the Tubularia indivisa, twisted tubes of fine straw, which ought already to have puzzled you; for you may pick them up in considerable masses on the Hastings beach after a south-west gale, and think long over them before you determine whether the oat- like stems and spongy roots belong to an animal, or a vegetable. Animals they are, nevertheless, though even now you will hardly guess the fact, when you see at the mouth of each tube a little scarlet flower, connected with the pink pulp which fills the tube. For a further description of this largest and handsomest of our Hydroid Polypes, I must refer you to Johnston, or, failing him, to Landsborough; and go on, to beg you not to despise those pink, or grey, or white lumps of jelly, which will expand in salt water into exquisite sea-anemones, of quite different forms from any which we have found along the rocks. One of them will certainly be the Dianthus, (27) which will open into a furbelowed flower, furred with innumerable delicate tentacula; and in the centre a mouth of the most delicate orange, the size of the whole animal being perhaps eight inches high and five across. Perhaps it will be of a satiny grey, perhaps pale rose, perhaps pure white; whatever its colour, it is the very maiden queen of all the beautiful tribe, and one of the loveliest gems with which it has pleased God to bedeck this lower world.

These and much more you will find on the scallops, or even more plentifully on any lump of ancient oysters; and if you do not dredge, it would be well worth your while to make interest with the fish-monger for a few oyster lumps, put into water the moment they are taken out of the trawl. Divide them carefully, clear out the oysters with a knife, and put the shells into your aquarium, and you will find that an oyster at home is a very different thing from an oyster on a stall.

You ought, besides, to dredge many handsome species of shells, which you would never pick up along the beach; and if you are conchologizing in earnest, you must not forget to bring home a tin box of shell sand, to be washed and picked over in a dish at your leisure, or forget either to wash through a fine sieve, over the boat's side, any sludge and ooze which the dredge brings up. Many - I may say, hundreds - rare and new shells are found in this way,and in no other.

But if you cannot afford the expense of your own dredge and boat, and the time and trouble necessary to follow the occupation scientifically, yet every trawler and oyster-boat will afford you a tolerable satisfaction. Go on board one of these; and while the trawl is down, spend a pleasant hour or two in talking with the simple, honest, sturdy fellows who work it, from whom (if you are as fortunate as I have been for many a year past) you may get many a moving story of danger and sorrow, as well as many a shrewd practical maxim, and often, too, a living recognition of God, and the providence of God, which will send you home, perhaps, a wiser and more genial man. And when the trawl is hauled, wait till the fish are counted out, and packed away, and then kneel down and inspect (in a pair of Mackintosh leggings, and your oldest coat) the crawling heap of shells and zoophytes which remains behind about the decks, and you will find, if a landsman, enough to occupy you for a week to come. Nay, even if it be too calm for trawling, condescend to go out in a dingy, and help to haul some honest fellow's deep-sea lines and lobster-pots, and you will find more and stranger things about them than even fish or lobsters: though they, to him who has eyes to see, are strange enough.