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 -

"When once we have begun to look with curiosity on the strange
things that ordinary people pass over without notice, our wonder is
continually excited by the variety of phase, and often by the
uncouthness of form, under which some of the meaner creatures are
presented to us. And this is very specially the case with the
inhabitants of the sea. We can scarcely poke or pry for an hour
among the rocks, at low-water mark, or walk, with an observant
downcast eye, along the beach after a gale, without finding some
oddly-fashioned, suspicious-looking being, unlike any form of life
that we have seen before. The dark concealed interior of the sea
becomes thus invested with a fresh mystery; its vast recesses
appear to be stored with all imaginable forms; and we are tempted
to think there must be multitudes of living creatures whose very
figure and structure have never yet been suspected.