brown or pinkish-drab column, dark greenish-brown discs, and two or three rows of exquisite satiny, rose-coloured, bluntish tentacles, as its brilliant hue flashes on one’s sight for the first time from within the darkened chamber and sanded couch that it loves best in the limestone rock? The light and warmth from heaven are grateful to its senses, the roar of the waters and the battling of the waves are sweetest music to its ears, and soothingly tranquillising to its comfort in activity or repose. The waifs and strays that fall to its share by the wayside strengthen its vitality, add to its stature, and clothe its whole frame in a thanksgiving to Him “who is I AM, even in the uttermost parts of the sea.” But Rosea is one who brings a mind not to be changed by time; for invite him to your home, and tears at once pour from its satin smooth skin, and the white threads of sorrow and dismay clothe it like a winding-sheet. Gently and firmly you pass the steel chisel under a portion of its prehensile base, and fondly you imagine the castle is surrendering; but “This rock shall fly from its firm base as soon as I,” says our resolute beauty; and by suckers and every available power it clings, and with the grasp and tenacity of a drowning man holds on to its much-loved home. We gain our end by bringing a portion of the rock with us; but, as La Bruyère says, we obtain our desire when it ceases to be of value to us; for, in spite of its leathery consistency and healthy-looking frame, the fair Rosea is a very Swiss with a mal du pays in our microcosm, and soon, very soon, it fades and droops, and ere long “a silent change dissolves the glittering mass.”
SAGARTIA MINIATA.
I wish I could say that Sagartia miniata is as bashful as the Brittle Star “Ophiocoma,” who, rather than submit to the vulgar gaze of the genus homo, recklessly throws off his arms and legs. I fear Miniata’s is a far stronger passion, for could an arrow from her quiver kill, few would survive who come to seek this pugnacious, cross-grained gentlewoman of her race—as luxuriating in her crystal drop she hangs pendent from the ceiling of her home in the beetling rock, or “sits high smiling in the conscious eye” in an arm-chair in an aqueous parlour, inhabited by queenly Dianthus, Viduata, &c. Various are the colours of Miniata’s column—brownish-red, olive-green, orange or brick-dust, with a plentiful supply of palish suckers adorning the upper half, and disks and tentacles speckled like a bird’s wing, in tints of red, brown, black, white, drab, or velvety-purple—of course differing in different varieties in colouring and marking.
Soft and delicate as Miniata seems in substance and construction, no Sagart is possessed of a stronger or healthier frame, or would live longer in a state of civilisation were it not for its irascible nature.
For like an angry reptile it stands upon the defensive, and is the first to begin the fray. A touch from even a camel’s hair brush, however lovingly given, brings forth a shower of white thready darts, that dangle about its frame afterwards, a miserable example of ungovernable temper—that were it not for the strong interest Miniata cannot fail to excite in its prettily marked garb, and her quiet, well bred manners and simplicity when left to her own devices, I should be inclined to compare her to a scorpion, who sometimes destroys itself by its own venom; for more than once have I known instances of individuals, who, quite healthy at the time, have drooped and died after giving way to a fit of naughty ungovernable passion. By frequently finding Miniata able to come home with me, almost at the first greeting, and without the aid of a chisel or a fragment of her habitation to comfort her, I conclude that she loves to wander amid the garden walks and alleys of her native pools and bowers, as much as she delights in exploring the boundaries and mounting the glassy heights of her new home. With what delicate politeness and reserve she passes the castellated dwellings of her neighbours, avoiding personal contact with the most scrupulous nicety! Although I am bound to add that if by chance a stray hand—tentacle—should touch her in friendly greeting, up goes her back like a Highland terrier, and a tell-tale thread dangling after her proclaims that the civility has only been construed into an insult. Miniata perched upon the heights of the tank, with her straightened column just laved by the water, her tentacles expanded, and prettily begging for a morsel, which she takes and devours with the keen relish and contentment of a frank nature, or seated in the hollow of a pecten or cockle-shell, in peace and quietness—free to come and go as she chooses—like people who have a good position in the world, and the wherewithal to maintain it—Miniata’s little weaknesses can be amiably overlooked, and she moves in her sphere with credit to herself and with sufficient admiration and notice to be considered a very worthy member of society and her face.
SAGARTIA TROGLODYTE, THE CAVE-DWELLER.
