beast worth talking about; as for finding one, I fear that we have
no chance of such good fortune.

Colonel Montagu found them here some forty years ago; and after
him, Mr. Alder, in 1845. I found hundreds of them, but only once,
in 1854 after a heavy south-eastern gale, washed up among the great
Lutrariae in a cove near Goodrington; but all my dredging outside
failed to procure a specimen - Mr. Alder, however, and Mr. Cocks
(who find everything, and will at last certainly catch Midgard, the
great sea-serpent, as Thor did, by baiting for him with a bull's
head), have dredged them in great numbers; the former, at Helford
in Cornwall, the latter on the west coast of Scotland. It seems,
however, to be a southern monster, probably a remnant, like the
great cockle, of the Mediterranean fauna; for Mr. MacAndrew finds
them plentifully in Vigo Bay, and J. Mller in the Adriatic, off
Trieste.

But what is it like? Conceive a very fat short earth-worm; not
ringed, though, like the earth-worm, but smooth and glossy, dappled
with darker spots, especially on one side, which may be the upper
one. Put round its mouth twelve little arms, on each a hand with
four ragged fingers, and on the back of the hand a stump of a
thumb, and you have Synapta Digitata (Plates IV. and V., from my
drawings of the live animal). These hands it puts down to its
mouth, generally in alternate pairs, but how it obtains its food by
them is yet a mystery, for its intestines are filled, like an
earth-worm's, with the mud in which it lives, and from which it
probably extracts (as does the earth-worm) all organic matters.

You will find it stick to your fingers by the whole skin, causing,