But here we are at the old bank of boulders, the ruins of an
antique pier which the monks of Tor Abbey built for their
convenience, while Torquay was but a knot of fishing huts within a
lonely limestone cove. To get to it, though, we have passed many a
hidden treasure; for every ledge of these flat New-red-sandstone
rocks, if torn up with the crowbar, discloses in its cracks and
crannies nests of strange forms which shun the light of day;
beautiful Actiniae fill the tiny caverns with living flowers; great
Pholades (Plate X. figs. 3, 4) bore by hundreds in the softer
strata; and wherever a thin layer of muddy sand intervenes between
two slabs, long Annelid worms of quaintest forms and colours have
their horizontal burrows, among those of that curious and rare
radiate animal, the Spoonworm, (8) an eyeless bag about an inch
long, half bluish grey, half pink, with a strange scalloped and
wrinkled proboscis of saffron colour, which serves, in some
mysterious way, soft as it is, to collect food, and clear its dark
passage through the rock.

See, at the extreme low-water mark, where the broad olive fronds of
the Laminariae, like fan-palms, droop and wave gracefully in the
retiring ripples, a great boulder which will serve our purpose.
Its upper side is a whole forest of sea-weeds, large and small; and
that forest, if you examined it closely, as full of inhabitants as
those of the Amazon or the Gambia. To "beat" that dense cover
would be an endless task: but on the under side, where no sea-
weeds grow, we shall find full in view enough to occupy us till the
tide returns. For the slab, see, is such a one as sea-beasts love
to haunt. Its weed-covered surface shows that the surge has not
shifted it for years past. It lies on other boulders clear of sand
and mud, so that there is no fear of dead sea-weed having lodged