If so, he is a coral; and we pass on.

But is his body fleshy and covered with a skin harder than the rest of him?

If so, then he is not a coral, and we ask a few more questions about him:

1. Are these single polyps found to be united, not on a common stem, but by a thin band of flesh at their base, something like the runners of strawberry plants?

If so he is a Zo-anthus ("live flower"), for a plate of which I may refer you to Mr. Gosse's new work on Marine Zoology.

2. Are these polyps entirely single, not joined in any way?

If so

Are his tentacles (long feelers or arms surrounding his mouth) in tufts, like patches of mignonette round a flower-bed, or in circles without any break in them?

If the former be the case, the specimen is a Lucernaria, and lucerna means "a lamp," and therefore the name is (as usual) descriptive of these tentacles hanging round the creature, like lights in a chandelier.

If his tentacles are in regular circles, he belongs to the "family" of the Actinoids, or "sun-beams"a name which forcibly recals the animal when you took him out of the cool depths of his rock-pool,

and every tentacle shot out its many-coloured lights among the pink corallines and the dark tresses of the sea-weeds.

You will have a few more questions to ask, and we will (to save time) set them down in a tabular form, heading them by the questions we have already asked, and they will be always at hand for future reference.

Helianthoids ("Sunflower-shaped Zoophytes").

1. Is your specimen covered with a hard shell of lime adhering to the rock?

Then it is a coral.

2. Is its body fleshy and its skin firm?

Then further

A. Are the individual polyps united at the base by a fleshy band?

Then it is a Zoanthus.

B. Are the individuals quite single?

Then further

a. Are the tentacles in tufts, at distant intervals?

Then it is a Lucernaria.

b. Are the tentacles in uninterrupted circles? Then it is a "sunbeam" or an Actinoid.

If an Actinoid

1. Are the tentacles without a hole or outlet at their extremity?

Then he is a Capnea or a Corynactis.

2. Do the tentacles possess this outlet, and also does. the animal draw them up within his outer skin when he is disturbed?

If he does, he is not an Anthea, about which I shall shortly speak, as he is found in great numbers amongst his relations, the sea-anemones.

If he does so

A. Is his base narrow and unfixed, after the

fashion of a beetroot just unearthed?

Then he is an Iluanthos, and lives in the mud (ilys, "mud," anthos, "flower"-Greek).

B. Is his base broad, and the animal immoveable?

Then he is an Adamsia, and lives round the mouth of shells.

C. Is his base broad, and does he possess the power of moving about by means of his base?

Then, he is an Actinia or

A SEA-ANEMONE.

And if you cannot discover him now, as well as many of his relations, I am afraid that I am unable to offer you any further assistance.

CHAPTER II.

WHERE IS A SEA-ANEMONE TO BE FOUND?

LET us go down to the rocks together. It is a glorious afternoon in the early summer time. A cool sea-wind is blowing from the westward; and the vertical sun-blaze is quenched from time to time by solitary masses of soft white cloud majestically rolling in from Lundy, or dimmed by those delicately-barred and fringed troops of cirri which are sailing in the upper current of air from the faroff line of the Welsh Mountains. Yesterday a heavy ground-sea was surging in from the Atlantic, but now a scarcely perceptible rise and fall of the waveless tide is swirling among the distant peaks of rock, and playing with the sea-weed tangles, as a strong man with the glistening tresses of the wife of his heart.

The tides are at their "spring," with a fall of twoand-thirty feet, and another hour will bring us to the flood-what more, then, can a naturalist desire?

Let us go. Suppose we leave the Promenade and the Tunnels to our friends-especially him of the "practical" mind-and climb yonder range of hills, where seven Torrs, like seven fair jewels in a king's crown, sun-emblazoned, beautiful, girdle this pleasant valley, and hush the din of the shore-breakers on stormy winter nights. Across the fern-hidden, wandering, many-voiced Wilder. Past the hazles and the hawthorns, and the meadow-grass, where the corn-crake shrills in the land, day and night, his dry and carking ditty. Under the furze copse, where the heavy-scented glories of its golden blossoms are gleaming, where the crisp purple heather and the climbing scarlet tangles of the dodder and the fresh green volutes of the young fern-leaves, yield a home and a happy "pleasaunce" to the insects, and the birds, and the countless, restless troops of the rabbits, who, among the well-known mazes, hold perpetual holiday. Another step, and we stand on the verge of a precipice, and look down upon the grey rocks, a hundred feet beneath us, and faintly hear the quiet breathings of the sunlit sea. We will follow this sheep-track, which winds round the edge of the cliff-a dangerous path enough on winter evenings when a heavy gale is blowing from the westward, and the long Atlantic rollers are breaking in foam-clouds on the shore. But there is no hazard on this quiet afternoon, so onwards, rapidly and fearlessly; and now we descend the triangular

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