Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/65

38 the beautiful Orange Pleurobranchus (P. plumula); the great yellow Doris (D. tuberculata) was adhering to a stone out of water, having resorted to the shallows, doubtless for the depositing of its ribbon of spawn, where it had been left by the recess of the tide;—and the pretty little Cowry (Cypræa Europæa), with ribbed porcelain shell, and elegantly painted body, was not uncommon. I saw for the first time Pilumnus hirtellus, a little hairy Crab that has a great love for the darkness, always resorting to the obscurest crannies; and Athanas nitescens, a tiny species of Prawn, of a dark sea-green hue, whose well developed pincers give it so much the aspect of a lobster, that it is generally believed without doubting, by the fishermen, to be the young state of that much honoured Crustacean. The habit of this pretty little species is to congregate in some small hollow covered by the tide, usually beneath the shelter of a protecting stone; so fond is it of companionship that if you find one you may pretty surely calculate on more. I have taken, one by one, as many as fifteen out of a hollow hardly more than a foot square. It lives long in an Aquarium, but you will rarely see it except you have occasion to empty the contents, when you will see your Lobster-prawns, as the last drops of water drain off, kicking and skipping about from beneath some piece of rock, where they had long been lurking unsuspected.

In the accompanying Plate, several animals and plants are depicted, which inhabit these ledges. In the foreground, near the middle of the picture, Trochus ziziphinus is represented crawling over a large stone. Behind it, on the mass of rock, two specimens