Here, adhering to this large whelk, is another, but far larger and coarser. It is Sagartia parasitica, one of our largest British species; and most singular in this, that it is almost always (in Torbay, at least,) found adhering to a whelk: but never to a live one; and for this reason. The live whelk (as you may see for yourself when the tide is out) burrows in the sand in chase of hapless bivalve shells, whom he bores through with his sharp tongue (always, cunning fellow, close to the hinge, where the fish is), and then sucks out their life. Now, if the anemone stuck to him, it would be carried under the sand daily, to its own disgust. It prefers, therefore, the dead whelk, inhabited by a soldier crab, Pagurus Bernhardi (Pl. II. Fig. 2), of which you may find a dozen anywhere as the tide goes out; and travels about at the crab’s expense, sharing with him the offal which is his food. Note, moreover, that the soldier crab is the most hasty and blundering of marine animals, as active as a monkey, and as subject to panics as a horse; wherefore the poor anemone on his back must have a hard life of it; being knocked about against rocks and shells, without warning, from morn to night and night to morn. Against which danger, kind Nature, ever _maxima in minimis_, has provided by fitting him with a stout leather coat, which she has given, I believe, to no other of his family.
Next, for the babies’ heads, covered with prickles, instead of hair. They are sea-urchins, Amphidotus cordatus, which burrow by thousands in the sand. These are of that Spatangoid form, which you will often find fossil in the chalk, and which shepherd boys call snakes’ heads. We shall soon find another sort, an Echinus, and have time to talk over these most strange (in my eyes) of all living animals.
There are a hundred more things to be talked of here: but we must defer the examination of them till our return; for it wants an hour yet of the dead low spring-tide; and ere we go home, we will spend a few minutes at least on the rocks at Livermead, where awaits us a strong-backed quarryman, with a strong-backed crowbar, as is to be hoped (for he snapped one right across there yesterday, falling miserably on his back into a pool thereby), and we will verify Mr. Gosse’s observation, that—