How grandly those heavy waves are rolling in upon this long shingle-beach! Onward they come, with an even deliberate march that tells of power, out of that lowering sky that broods over the southern horizon; onward they come, onward! onward!—each following its precursor in serried ranks, ever coming nearer and nearer, ever looming larger and larger, like the resistless legions of a great invading army, sternly proud in its conscious strength; and ever and anon, as one and another dark billow bre

What will Babbicombe Bay yield us this fine February morning? One thing at least it yields, a magnificent coast view; and this is scarcely affected by the season. Let there be only a moderately clear atmosphere, a sky chequered with blue spaces and white wind-borne clouds, and snatches of sunshine interchanging with shadows,—which last there will be, of course, with such a sky,—and such a prospect cannot fail to please. And, indeed, this noble sweep of precipitous coast can hardly be surpassed f

Perhaps the most effective aid to the investigation of natural history which the present age has produced is the invention of the aquarium, and particularly its application to marine forms of life. Depending on that grand principle of organic chemistry, of world-wide prevalence, that the emanations from animals and vegetables are respectively essential to the continued life each of the other, it was discovered that the relative proportions of number and bulk in which organic beings of the two ki

Shall we explore the sands to-day? A bright sandy beach well exposed to the sea is no bad hunting-ground for the naturalist, bare as it looks, and proverbial as is its character for sterility,—“barren as the sand on the sea-shore.” And specially is it likely to be productive, when, as is often the case, the wide reach of yellow sand is interrupted by one or more isolated areas of rough rocks. Goodrington Sands, lying in the hollow of Torbay, afford just these conditions; and thither will we bend

We are far from having exhausted the treasures of the teeming sands. Another visit to their broad expanse may yield other objects of interest not inferior to those we lately discovered there. Let us, then, seek the shore, where our humble friend the shrimper, with his wading horse, under the guidance of his shrill-voiced little son, still pursues his indefatigable calling. Again the keer-drag is drawn up the tawny beach, the bag is untied, and the sparkling, crawling, jumping heap spreads itself

We are on the narrow shingle-beach of Maidencombe, or, sometimes, more familiarly, Minnicombe; one of the slight indentations of this line of coast, which, from the mouth of the Exe to Start Point, runs nearly north and south, and so looks right up-channel, and receives the full violence of the keen and blustering east winds. Away down the gentle slope till we come to the line where the wavelets are kissing the rock, where the next step would put us into King Canute’s circumstances, where the se

A mile or two eastward of Babbicombe and Petit Tor, in from ten to fifteen fathoms water, there lies a stretch of flat stony bottom, reaching away from the island known as the Ore Stone, towards the mouth of the river Exe. This is a bit of ground to which a boatman whom I occasionally employ often resorts with the dredge, and rarely or never without a fair harvest of curious and interesting creatures. Among other things he brings me from time to time numerous specimens of what Yarrell calls the

What eager pursuer of marine animals has not gloated over a rock-pool? On all our rocky coasts we find them more or less developed; but it is on these south-western shores, where the compact limestone juts out into promontories, that we find them in perfection. The burrowing mollusca specially favour the limestone; the Saxicava , I think, lives in no other medium; and it is to the operation of this coarse ugly little shell-fish that this rock is indebted for the honeycomb-like excavation which h

Good service was done to the cause of science when, some fifteen or twenty years since, Robert Ball of Dublin invented the naturalist’s dredge. A huge unwieldy form of the implement has indeed been long in use among fishermen for the obtaining of oysters and scallops; a clumsy affair, of which the frame, furnished only with a single lip, was four or five feet wide, and the bag was formed of iron rings, two inches in diameter,—a loose and open sort of chain-mail. There was an object in this last

The naturalist who has occasion to make a voyage over the warmer regions of the ocean, is continually delighted by the sight of numberless forms of animals, principally of the lower invertebrate classes, which either habitually swim at the surface of the sea, or come thither at intervals to enjoy the stimulus of the atmospheric air. Many of these are exceedingly curious and interesting; many totally unlike any forms that occur on the shores of temperate countries; many elegant in contour, and ad

If we could roam at pleasure over the bottom of the sea, with the privilege of using all our senses as effectually and as comfortably as in the air, we should doubtless see some wonderful things. We might not, indeed, find all the useful and ornamental articles that drowning Clarence saw in his dream, but doubtless we might substitute for them things that he never dreamed of, things that the eye of man was not as yet cultivated to see. What opportunities for enlarging the bounds of science are p

December is here, with its short days, its feeble watery sunshine, its frequent gloom and mist, its hanging leaden skies; in short, as the poet describes it,— It requires some zeal in the pursuit of scientific lore to leave the glowing fire and the pleasant book, the luxurious arm-chair and the elastic carpet, and to venture down to the wild sea-beach, to poke and peer among the desolate rocks. Yet even now we may find a few bright days, when Nature abroad looks inviting, and when an hour’s mari