Chapter III (2)

replied Mark. And the fowls said nothing, for they were by no means at ease in their consciences.

Their delight was proportionably great when, a few minutes later, the sentinel sang out from his post,

"Here comes Flaps, like the mail!
And he's waving his tail."

"Well, dear, dear Flaps!" they all cackled as he came trotting up, "where is our new home, and what is it like?"

"Will there be plenty to eat?" asked the cocks with one crow.

"Plenty," replied Flaps.

"Shall we be safe from mice, owls, wild beasts, and wild men?" cried the hens.

"You will," answered Flaps.

"Is it far, dear Flaps?"

"It is very near," said Flaps; "but I may as well tell you the truth at once--it's a farmyard."

"Oh!--" said all the fowls.

"We may be roasted, or have our heads chopped off," whimpered the young cockerels.

"Well, Scratchfoot was roasted at Hencastle," said Flaps; "and he wasn't our only loss. One can't have everything in this world; and I assure you, if you could see the poultry-yard--so dry under foot, nicely wired in from marauders; the most charming nests, with fresh hay in them; drinking-troughs; and then at regular intervals, such abundance of corn, mashed potatoes, and bones, that my own mouth watered at--are served out--"

"That sounds good," said the young cockerels.

"Ahem! ahem!" said the chief cock. "Did you see anything very remarkable--were the specimens of my race much superior in strength and good looks?----"

"My dear cock!" said Flaps; "there's not a tail or a comb or a hackle to touch you. You'll be cock of the walk in no time."

"Ahem! ahem!" said the chief cock modestly. "I have always had a sort of fatality that way. Pray, my dears, don't look so foolish and deplorable, but get the young people together, and let us make a start. Mr. Flaps is a person of strong common sense, a quality for which I myself have always been remarkable, and I thoroughly endorse and support his excellent advice, of which I am the best judge. I have very much regretted of late to observe a tendency in this family (I say a tendency, for I hope it goes no further) to undervalue Mr. Flaps, and even (I hardly like to allude to such reprehensible and disgusting absurdity) to recall the memory of a vulgar red-haired impostor, who gained a brief entrance into our family circle. I am not consulted as I should be in these fluctuations of opinion, but there are occasions when it is necessary that the head of a family should exercise his discretion and his authority, and, so to speak, put down his claw. I put down my claw. We are going to Mr. Flaps' farmyard. Cock-a-doodle-doo Cock-a-doodle-doo!"

Now, when the head of a family says "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" there is nothing more to be said. So to the farmyard the whole lot of them went, and were there before the sun got one golden hair of his head over the roof of the big barn.

And only Mark, as they all crowded into their new home, turned his head round over his back to say: "And you, Flaps; what shall you do?"

"Oh, I shall be all right," said Flaps. "Good-bye and good luck to you."

It cannot be said that Flaps was positively in high spirits when he had settled his protégés in their new home in the farmyard, and was left alone; but there are some good folk who contrive to make duty do the work of pleasure in this life, and then a piece of business fairly finished is as good as a treat.

It is not bread and bones, however, and Flaps was very hungry--so hungry that he could not resist the temptation to make his way towards the farmhouse, on the chance of picking up some scraps outside. And that was how it came about, that when the farmer's little daughter Daisy, with a face like the rosy side of a white-heart cherry set deep in a lilac print hood, came back from going with the dairy lass to fetch up the cows, she found Flaps snuffing at the back door, and she put her arms round his neck (they reached right round with a little squeezing) and said:

"Oh, I never knew you'd be here so early! You nice thing!"

And Flaps' nose went right into the print hood, and he put out his tongue and licked Daisy's face from the point of her chin up her right cheek to her forehead, and then from her forehead down her left cheek back to her chin, and he found that she was a very nice thing too.

But the dairymaid screamed, "Good gracious! where did that nasty strange dog come from? Leave him alone, Miss Daisy, or he'll bite your nose off."

"He won't!" said Daisy indignantly. "He's the dog Daddy promised me;" and the farmer coming out at that minute, she ran up to him crying, "Daddy! Isn't this my dog?"

"Bless the child, no!" said the farmer; "it's a nice little pup I'm going to give thee. Where did that dirty old brute come from?"

"He would wash," said little Daisy, holding very fast to Flaps' coat.

"Fine washing too!" said the dairymaid, "And his hair's all lugs."

"I could comb them," said Daisy.

"He's no but got one eye," said the swineherd. "Haw! haw! haw!"

"He sees me with the other," said Daisy. "He's looking up at me now."

"And one of his ears gone!" cried the dairy lass. "He! he! he!"

"Perhaps I could make him a cap," said Daisy, "as I did when my doll lost her wig. It had pink ribbons and looked very nice."

"Why, he's lame of a leg," guffawed the two farming-men. "See, missy, he hirples on three."

"I can't run very fast," said Daisy, "and when I'm old enough to, perhaps his leg will be well."

"Why, you don't want this old thing for a play-fellow, child?" said the farmer.

"I do! I do!" wept Daisy.

"But why, in the name of whims and whamsies?"

"Because I love him," said Daisy.

When it comes to this with the heart, argument is wasted on the head; but the farmer-went on: "Why he's neither useful nor ornamental. He's been a good dog in his day, I dare say; but now--"

At this moment Flaps threw his head up in the air and sniffed, and his one eye glared, and he set his teeth and growled.

He smelt the gipsy, and the gipsy's black pipe, and every hair stood on end with rage.

"The dog's mad!" cried the swineherd, seizing a pitchfork.

"You're a fool," said the farmer (who wasn't). "There's some one behind that haystack, and the old watch-dog's back is up. See! there he runs; and as I'm a sinner, it's that black rascal who was loitering round, the day my ricks were fired, and you lads let him slip. Off after him, for I fancy I see smoke." And the farmer flew to his haystacks.

Hungry and tired as he was, Flaps would have pursued his old enemy, but Daisy would not let him go. She took him by the ear and led him indoors to breakfast instead. She had a large basin of bread-and-milk, and she divided this into two portions, and gave one to Flaps and kept the other for herself. And as she says she loves Flaps, I leave you to guess who got most bread-and-milk.

That was how the gipsy came to live for a time in the county gaol, where he made mouse-traps rather nicely for the good of the rate-payers.

And that was how Flaps, who had cared so well for others, was well cared for himself, and lived happily to the end of his days.

* * * * *

"Why, it's in print!" said Father Cock; "and I said as plain as any cock could crow, that it was a secret. Now, who let it out?"

"Don't talk to me about secrets," said the fair foreigner; "I never trouble my head about such things."

"Some people are very fond of drawing attention to their heads," said the common hen; "and if other people didn't think more of a great unnatural-looking chignon than of all the domestic virtues put together, they might have their confidences respected."

"I's all very well," said Father Cock, "but you're all alike. There's not a hen can know a secret without going and telling it."

"Well, come!" said a little Bantam hen, who had newly arrived; "whichever hen told it, the cock must have told it first."

"What's that ridiculous nonsense your talking?" cried the cock; and he ran at her and pecked her well with his beak.

"Oh! oh! oh!" cried the Bantam.

Dab, dab, dab, pecked the cock.

"Now! has anybody else got anything to say on the subject?"

But nobody had. So he flew up on to the wall, and cried "Cock-a-doodle-doo!"

A WEEK SPENT IN A GLASS POND.

BY THE GREAT WATER-BEETLE.

Very few beetles have ever seen a Glass Pond. I once spent a week in one, and though I think, with good management, and in society suitably selected, it may be a comfortable home enough, I advise my water-neighbours to be content with the pond in the wood.

The story of my brief sojourn in the Glass Pond is a story with a moral, and it concerns two large classes of my fellow-creatures: those who live in ponds and--those who don't. If I do not tell it, no one else will. Those connected with it who belong to the second class (namely, Francis, Molly, and the learned Doctor, their grandfather) will not, I am sure. And as to the rest of us, there is none left but--

However, that is the end of my tale, not the beginning.

The beginning, as far as I am concerned, was in the Pond. It is very difficult to describe a pond to people who cannot live under water, just as I found it next door to impossible to make a minnow I knew believe in dry land. He said, at last, that perhaps there might be some little space beyond the pond in hot weather, when the water was low; and that was the utmost that he would allow. But of all cold-blooded unconvinceable creatures, the most obstinate are fish.

Men are very different. They do not refuse to believe what lies beyond their personal experience. I respected the learned Doctor, and was really sorry for the disadvantages under which he laboured. That a creature of his intelligence should have only two eyes, and those not even compound ones--that he should not be able to see under water or in the dark--that he should not only have nothing like six legs, but be quite without wings, so that he could not even fly out of his own window for a turn in the air on a summer's evening--these drawbacks made me quite sorry for him; for he had none of the minnow's complacent ignorance. He knew my advantages as well as I knew them myself, and bore me no ill-will for them.

"The _Dyticus marginalis_, or Great Water-Beetle," I have heard him say, in the handsomest manner, "is equally at home in the air, or in the water. Like all insects in the perfect state, it has six legs, of which the hindmost pair are of great strength, and fringed so as to serve as paddles. It has very powerful wings, and, with Shakespeare's witches, it flies by night. It has two simple, and two sets of compound eyes. When it goes below water, it carries a stock of air with it, on the diving-bell principle; and when this is exhausted, comes to the surface, tail uppermost, for a fresh supply. It is the most voracious of the carnivorous water-beetles."

The last sentence is rather an unkind reflection on my good appetite, but otherwise the Doctor spoke handsomely of me, and without envy.

And yet I am sure it could have been no matter of wonder if my compound eyes, for instance, had been a very sore subject with a man who knew of them, and whose one simple pair were so nearly worn out.

More than once, when I have seen the old gentleman put a green shade on to his reading-lamp, and glasses before his eyes, I have felt inclined to hum,--"Ah, my dear Doctor, if you could only take a cool turn in the pond! You would want no glasses or green shades, where the light comes tenderly subdued through water and water-weeds."

Indeed, after living, as I can, in all three--water, dry land, and air,--I certainly prefer to be under water. Any one whose appetite is as keen, and whose hind-legs are as powerful as mine, will understand the delights of hunting, and being hunted, in a pond; where the light comes down in fitful rays and reflections through the water, and gleams among the hanging roots of the frog-bit, and the fading leaves of the water-starwort, through the maze of which, in and out, hither and thither, you pursue, and are pursued, in cool and skilful chase, by a mixed company of your neighbours, who dart, and shoot, and dive, and come and go, and any one of whom at any moment may either eat you or be eaten by you.

And if you want peace and quiet, where can one bury oneself so safely and completely as in the mud? A state of existence, without mud at the bottom, must be a life without repose.

I was in the mud one day, head downwards, when human voices came to me through the water. It was summer, and the pond was low at the time.

"Oh, Francis! Francis! The Water-Soldier[D] is in flower."

"Hooray! Dig him up for the aquarium! Grandfather says it's very rare--doesn't he?"

"He says it's not at all common; and there's only one, Francis. It would be a pity if we didn't get it up by the roots, and it died."

"Nonsense, Molly. I'll get it up. But let's get the beasts first. You get the pickle-jar ready, whilst I fix the stick on to the colander."

"Does cook know you've taken it, Francis?"

"By this time she does, I should think. Look here, Molly--I wish you would try and get this stick right. It wants driving through the handles. I'm just going to have a look at the Water-Soldier."

"You always give me the work to do," Molly complained; and as she spoke, I climbed up an old stake that was firmly planted in the mud, and seated myself on the top, which stood out of the water, and looked at her.

She was a neat-looking little soul, with rosy cheeks, and a resolute expression of countenance. She looked redder and firmer than usual as she drove the broomstick through the handles of the colander, whilst the boy was at the other side of the pond with the Water-Soldier, whose maiden-blossom shone white among its sword-leaves.

It shone in the sunshine which came gaily through a gap in the trees, and warmed my coat through to my wings, and made the pond look lovely. That greedy _Ranatra_, who eats so much, and never looks a bit the more solid for his meals, crept up a reed and sunned his wings; the water-gnats skimmed and skated about, measuring the surface of the water with their long legs; the "boatmen" shot up and down till one was quite giddy, showing the white on their bodies, like swallows wheeling for their autumn-flight. Even the water-scorpion moved slowly over a sunny place from the roots of an arrow-head lily to a dark corner under the duck-weed.

"Molly!" shouted the boy; "I wish you'd come and give a pull at the Water-Soldier. I've nearly got him up; but the leaves cut my hands, and you've got gloves. If the colander is ready, I'll begin to fish. There's a beetle on that stick. I wish I were near enough, I could snatch him up like anything."

"I wouldn't advise you to," said Molly. "Grandfather says that water-beetles have got daggers in their tails. Besides, some of the beetles are very greedy and eat the fish."

"The Big Black one doesn't," said Francis. "He said so. _Hydröus piceus_ is the name, and I dare say that's the one. It's the biggest of all the water-beetles and very harmless."

"He _may_ be a good one," said Molly, looking thoughtfully and unmistakably at me, "but then he may be one of the bad ones; and if he is, he'll eat everything before him."

But by this time Francis was dipping the colander in and out on the opposite side, and she was left to struggle with the Water-Soldier.

"He's up at last," she announced, and the Soldier was landed on the bank.

"Come round," said the boy; "I've filled three jars."

"I hope you've been careful, Francis. You know Grandfather says that to stock a fresh-water aquarium is like the puzzle of the Fox and the Geese and the bag of seed. It's no use our having things that eat each other."

"They must eat something," said the boy; "they're used to it at home; and I wish you wouldn't be always cramming Grandfather down my throat. I want to do my aquarium my own way; and I gave most towards buying the bell-glass, so it's more mine than yours."

"Well, do as you like; only let us have plenty of water-boatmen," said Molly.

"I've got half-a-dozen at least; and the last sweep I went very low, quite in the mud, and I've got some most horrid things. There's one of them like a flat-iron, with pincers at the point."

"That's a water-scorpion. Oh, Francis! he eats dreadfully."

"I don't believe he can, he's so flat. Molly, is that nasty-looking thing a dragon-fly larva?"

"I believe it is; for there is the mask. You know his face is so ugly nothing would come near him if he didn't wear a mask. Then he lifts it up and snaps suddenly; _he_ really _does_ eat everything!"

"Well, I can't help it. I must have him. I want to see him hatch; and I shall plant a bullrush for him to climb up."

"I found a caddis-worm, with a beautifully built house, in the roots of the Water-Soldier, and I'm going to look along the edge for some shells. We must have shell-fish, you know, to keep the aquarium clean. Oh!"

"What is it, Molly? What have you found?"

"Oh, such a lovely spider! A water-spider--a scarlet spider. He's very small, but such a colour! Francis dear, may I keep him all to myself? I don't think I _can_ let him go in with the others. If the dragon-fly larva ate him, I should never forgive myself, and you know you don't know for certain that the beetle is _Hydröus piceus_. I shall give him an aquarium of his very own in a green finger-glass, with nothing but a little very nice duckweed, and one small snail to keep it clean, like a general servant. May I, Francis?"

"By all means. I don't want your scarlet spider. I can get lots more." He went on dipping with the colander, and she began to dig up water-plants and lay them in a heap. I sat and watched them, but the _Ranatra_ got nervous and tried to go below. As usual, the dry bristles in his tail would not pierce the water without a struggle, and after floundering in the most ludicrous fashion for a few minutes, he fell straight into the colander, and was put into one of the pickle-jars.

"I've got enough now," said the boy, "and I want to go home and see about my net. I must have some fish. Can you carry the plants, Molly?"

"I'll manage," said Molly. "Now I'm ready."

"Wait a minute, though--I'd forgotten the beetle."

When I heard this I dropped into the water; but somehow or other I turned over very clumsily, and, like the _Ranatra_, I fell through into the colander, and was transferred to a pickle-jar.

Anything more disagreeable than being shaken up in a glass bottle, with beetles, and boatmen, and larvæ of all sorts and sizes, including a dragon-fly in the second stage of his career, I can hardly imagine. When they took us out and put us into the glass pond, matters were certainly better, though there is a vast difference between a glass pond and a pond in a wood.

The first day it was by no means a bad imitation of a real pond, except for the want of a bed of mud. Molly had covered the bottom of the glass with gravel which she had steadily washed till water would run clear from it, in spite of the impatient exclamations of Francis, that it "would do now," and quite regardless of the inconvenience to which I was subjected by being kept in the pickle-jar. In this gravel she had embedded the roots of some Water Crowfoot and other pond-plants. The stones in the middle were nicely arranged, and well covered with moss and water-weeds. When water had been poured in up to the brim of the bell-glass, and we had been emptied out of the jars, the dragon-fly larva got into a good hole among the stones and ate most of the May-fly grubs, water-shrimps, and so forth, as they came into sight. I did not do badly myself, and only the bigger and stronger members of our society and a few skins were there next day, when Francis brought a jar full of minnows, a small carp, and a bull's-head, and turned them out in our midst.

"How they dart and swim round and round!" he exclaimed.

"Splendid," said Molly. "I _am_ so sorry I am going away just now. You will try and keep the water fresh, won't you?"

"Of course I will. And let me have the scarlet spider whilst you are away. I couldn't find another."

"Well, if you must; but do take care, Francis. And here are the two bits of gutta-percha tubing to make into syphons. You must put them into hot water for a minute before you bend them, you know."

"I'll do it to-morrow, Molly; I have nothing else _to_ do, you know, because Edward Brown won't be back for three or four days. So we can do nothing about the cricket club."

It was on the third day, when both the pieces of gutta-percha tubing were in a wash-hand basin of hot water, and the dragon-fly larva and I were finishing a minnow, with the help of the water-scorpion, that Master Edward Brown arrived unexpectedly, and so pressed his friend Francis to come out and consult "just for two minutes," and so delayed him when he got him, that the tubing melted into a shapeless lump, and the carp died unnoticed by any one but myself.

On the fourth day the glass pond was moved into the conservatory, "to be out of the way." The fish were excellent eating, and though the snails were at their wits' end as the refuse rotted, and the water became more stagnant, and the weeds grew, till all the shell-fish in the pond could not have kept the place clean,--I did not mind it myself. As the water got low, I found a nice bit of rockwork above water, where I could sit by day, and at night the lights from the drawing-room gave an indescribable stimulus to my wings, and I sailed in, and flew round and round till I was tired, and (forgetting that no pond, not even a bed of mud, was below me!) drew in my wings, and dropped sharply down on to the floor. To do the family justice, they learned to know the sound of my fall, and even the old Doctor himself would go down on hands and knees to hunt for me under the sofa, for fear I should be trodden on.

On the fifth day I swallowed the scarlet spider. I hated myself for doing it, when I thought of Molly; but the spider was very foolish to meet me. He should have kept behind. And if I hadn't eaten him, the dragon-fly larva would. What _he_ had eaten, I do not think he could have told himself. There was very little left now for any one; even the water-scorpion had disappeared.

On the sixth day the glass pond had only two tenants worth speaking of--the dragon-fly larva and myself. We had both over-eaten ourselves, and for some hours we moved slowly about through the thickening puddle, nodding civilly when we passed each other among the feathery sprays of the Water Crowfoot. Then I began to get hungry. I knew it by feeling an impulse to look out for the dragon-fly larva, and I knew he knew it because he began to avoid me.

On the seventh day Molly ran into the conservatory, followed by her brother, and uttered a cry of dismay.

"Oh, what a state it's in! Where are the syphons?"

"Why, they melted the day Edward Brown came back. We've been having such a lot of cricket, Molly!"

"There isn't a fish left, and it smells horribly."

"I'm very sorry, Molly. Let's throw it out. I don't want Grandfather to see it. Let me come."

"No, no, Francis! There may be some left. Yes, there's the beetle. I shall put it all in a pail and take it back to the pond. Oh dear! oh dear! I can't see anything of the scarlet spider. My beautiful scarlet spider! I was so fond of him. Oh, I am so sorry! And no one has watered the Soldier, and he's dead too."

"Don't cry, Molly! Please don't cry! I dare say the spider is there, only it's so small."

For some time Molly poked carefully here and there, but the spider was not to be found, and the contents of the aquarium were carried back to the wood.

I was very glad to see the pond again. The water-gnats were taking dimensions as usual, a blue-black beetle sat humming on the stake, and dragon-flies flitted hungrily about, like splinters of a broken rainbow; but the Water-Soldier's place was empty, and it was never refilled. He was the only specimen.

Molly was probably in the right when, after a last vain search for the scarlet spider, as Francis slowly emptied the pail, she said with a sigh,

"What makes me so very sorry is, that I don't think we ought to have 'collected' things unless we had really attended to them, and knew how to keep them alive."

FOOTNOTES:

Footnote D: Water-soldier--_Stratiotes aloides._ A handsome and rare plant, of aloe-like appearance, with a white blossom rising in the centre of its sword-leaves.

AMONG THE MERROWS.

A SKETCH OF A GREAT AQUARIUM.

I remember the time when I, and a brother who was with me, devoutly believed in a being whom we supposed to live among certain black, water-rotted, weed-grown stakes by the sea. These old wooden ruins were, I fancy, the remains of some rude pier, and amid them, when the tide was low, we used to play, and to pay fancy visits to our fancy friend.

We called her Shriny--why, I know no more than when I first read Croker's delightful story of "The Soul Cages" I knew why the Merrow whom Jack went to see below the waves was called Coomara.

My remembrance of even what we fancied about Shriny is very dim now; and as my brother was only four years old (I was eight), his is not more distinct. I know we thought of her, and talked of her, and were always eager to visit her supposed abode, and wander together amongst its rotten pillars (which, as we were so small, seemed lofty enough in our eyes), where the mussels and limpets held tightly on, and the slimy, olive-green fucus hung loosely down--a sea-ivy covering ruins made by the waves.

I have never been to the place since those days. If Shriny's palace is there now at all, I dare say I should find the stakes to be stumps, and all the vastness and mystery about them gone for ever. And yet we used to pretend to feast with her there. We served up the seed-vessels of the fucus as fish. I do not think we really ate them, we only sucked out the salt water, and tried to fancy we were enjoying the repast. Once we _began_ to eat a limpet!--Beyond that point my memory is dumb.

I wonder how we should have felt if Shriny had really appeared to us, as Coomara appeared to Jack Dogherty, and taken us down below the waves, or kept us among the stakes of her palace till the tide flooded them, and perhaps filled it with wonderful creatures and beautiful things, and floated out the dank, dripping fucus into a veil of lace above our heads; as our mother used to float out little dirty lumps of seaweed into beautiful web-like pictures when she was preserving them for her collection.

Shriny never did come, though Mr. Croker says Coomara came to Jack.

Perhaps, young readers, some of you have never read the story of the Soul Cages. It is a long one, and I am not going to repeat it here, only to say a word or two about it, for which I have a reason.

Jack Dogherty--so the story goes--had always longed to see a Merrow. Merrow is the Irish name for seafolk; indeed, it properly means a mermaid. And Jack, you know, lived in a fairy tale, and not in lodgings at a watering-place on the south coast; so he saw his Merrow, though we never saw Shriny.

I do not think any of the after-history of the Merrow is equal to Mr. Croker's account of his first appearance to Jack: afterwards "Old Coo" becomes more like a tipsy old fisherman than the man-fish that he was.

The first appearance was on the coast to the northward, when "just as Jack was turning a point, he saw something, like to nothing he had ever seen before, perched upon a rock at a little distance out to sea; it looked green in the body, as well as he could discern at that distance, and he would have sworn, only the thing was impossible, that it had a cocked-hat in its hand. Jack stood for a good half-hour, straining his eyes and wondering at it, and all the time the thing did not stir hand or foot. At last Jack's patience was quite worn out, and he gave a loud whistle and a hail, when the Merrow (for such it was) started up, put the cocked-hat on its head, and dived down, head foremost, from the rocks."

For a long time Jack could get no nearer view of "the sea-gentleman with the cocked-hat," but at last, one stormy day, when he had taken refuge in one of the caves along the coast, "he saw, sitting before him, a thing with green hair, long green teeth, a red nose, and pig's eyes. It had a fish's tail, legs with scales on them, and short arms like fins. It wore no clothes, but had the cocked-hat under its arm, and seemed engaged thinking very seriously about something."

As I copy these words--_It wore no clothes, but had the cocked-hat under its arm, and seemed engaged thinking very seriously about something_--it seems to me that the portrait is strangely like something that I have seen. And the more I think of it, the more I am convinced that the type is familiar to me, and that, though I do not live in a fairy story, I have been among the Merrows. And further still that any one who pleases may go and see Coomara's cousins any day.

There can be no doubt of it! I have seen a Merrow--several Merrows. That unclothed, over-harnessed form is before me now; sitting motionless on a rock, "engaged thinking very seriously," till in some sudden impulse it rises, turns up its red nose, makes some sharp angular movements with head and elbows, and plunges down, with about as much grace as if some stiff, red-nosed old admiral, dressed in nothing but cocked-hat, spectacles, telescope, and a sword between his legs, were to take a header from the quarter-deck into the sea.

I do not want to make a mystery about nothing. I should have resented it thoroughly myself when I was young. I make no pretence to have had any glimpses of fairyland. I could not see Shriny when I was eight years old, and I never shall now. Besides, no one sees fairies now-a-days. The "path to bonnie Elfland" has long been overgrown, and few and far between are the Princes who press through and wake the Beauties that sleep beyond. For compensation, the paths to Mother Nature's Wonderland are made broader, easier, and more attractive to the feet of all men, day by day. And it is Mother Nature's Merrows that I have seen--in the Crystal Palace Aquarium.

How Mr. Croker drew that picture of Coomara the Merrow, when he probably never saw a sea crayfish, a lobster, or even a prawn at home, I cannot account for, except by the divining and prophetic instincts of genius. And when I speak of his seeing a crayfish, a lobster, or a prawn at home, I mean at their home, and not at Mr. Croker's. Two very different things for our friends the "sea-gentlemen," as to colour as well as in other ways. In his own home, for instance, a lobster is of various beautiful shades of blue and purple. In Mr. Croker's home he would be bright scarlet--from boiling! So would the prawn, and as solid as you please; who in his own home is colourless and transparent as any ghost.

Strangely beautiful those prawns are when you see them at home. And that one seems to do in the Great Aquarium; though, I suppose, it is much like seeing land beasts and birds in the Zoological Gardens--a poor imitation of their free life in their natural condition. Still, there is no other way in which you can see and come to know these wonderful "sea gentlemen" so well, unless you could go, like Jack Dogherty, to visit them at the bottom of the sea. And whilst I heartily recommend every one who has not seen the Aquarium to visit it as soon as possible, let me describe it for the benefit of those who cannot do so at present. It may also be of some little use to them hereafter to know what is most worth seeing there, and where to look for it.

No sooner have you paid your sixpence at the turnstile which admits you, than your eye is caught by what seems to be a large window in the wall, near the man who has taken your money. You look through the glass, and find yourself looking into a deep sea-pool, with low stone-grey rocks studded with sea-anemones in full bloom. There are twenty-one different species of sea-anemones in the Aquarium; but those to be seen in this particular pool are chosen from about seven of the largest kinds. The very biggest, a _Tealia crassicornis_, measures ten inches across when he spreads his pearly fingers to their full extent. "In my young days" we called him by the familiar name of Crassy; and found him so difficult to keep in domestic captivity, that it was delightful to see him blooming and thriving as he does in Tank No. 1 of the Great Aquarium. His squat build--low and broad--contrasts well with those tall white neighbours of his (_Dianthus plumosa_), whose faces are like a plume of snowy feathers. All the sea-anemones in this tank have settled themselves on the rocks according to their own fancy. They are of lovely shades of colour, rosy, salmon-coloured, and pearly-white.

There are more than five thousand sea-anemones of various kinds in the Aquarium; and they have an attendant, whose sole occupation is to feed them, by means of a pair of long wooden forceps.

Reluctantly breaking away from such old friends, we pass through a door into a long vault-like stone passage or hall, down one side of which there seem to be high large windows, about as far apart as windows of a long room commonly are. Behind each of these is a sea-pool like the first one.

Take the first of the lot--Tank No. 2. It is stocked with _Serpulæ_. Sea-anemones are well-known to most people, but tube-worms are not such familiar friends; so I will try to describe this particular kind of "sea-gentlemen." The tube-worms are so called because, though they are true worms (sea-worms), they do not trust their soft bodies to the sea, as our common earth-worms trust theirs in a garden-bed, but build themselves tubes inside which they live, popping their heads out at the top now and then like a chimney-sweep pushing his brush out at the top of a tall round chimney. Now if you can fancy one of our tall round manufactory chimneys to be white instead of black, and the round chimney-sweep's brush to have lovely gay-coloured feathers all round it instead of dirty bristles, or if you can fancy the sweep letting off a monster catherine-wheel at the chimney's mouth, you may have some idea what a tube-worm's head is like when he pokes it out of his tube.

The _Serpulæ_ make their tubes of chalky stuff, something like egg-shell; and they stick them on to anything that comes to hand down below. Those in the Great Aquarium came from Weymouth. They were dredged up with the white pipes or tubes sticking to oyster-shells, old bottles, stones, and what not, like bits of maccaroni glued on to old crockery sherds. These odds and ends are overgrown, however, with weeds and zoophytes, and (like an ugly house covered by creepers) look picturesque rather than otherwise. The worms have small bristles down their bodies, which serve as feet, and help them to scramble up inside their tubes, when they wish to poke their heads out and breathe. These heads are delicate, bright-coloured plumes. Each species has its own plume of its own special shape and colour. They are only to be seen when the animal is alive. A good many little _Serpulæ_ have been born in the Aquarium.

Through the next window--Tank No. 3--you may see more tube-worms, with ray-like, daisy heads, and soft muddy tubes. They are _Sabellæ_.

Have you ever see a "sea-mouse"? Probably you have: preserved in a bottle. It is only like a mouse from being about the size of a mouse's body, without legs, and with a lot of rainbow-coloured hairs. You may be astonished to hear that it is classed among the worms. There is a sea-mouse in the Great Aquarium. I did not see him; perhaps because he is given to burrowing. If he is not in one of the two tanks just named he is probably in No. 21 or No. 25. He is so handsome dead and in a bottle, that he must be gorgeous to behold alive and in a pool. You should look out for him.

It is a disappointing feature of this water wonderland that some of the "sea-gentlemen" are apt to hide, like hobbledehoy children, when visitors call. Indeed, a good many of them--such as the swimming-crabs, the burrowing-crabs, the sea-scorpions, and the eels--are night-feeders, and one cannot expect them to change their whole habits and customs to be seen of the British public. Anyhow, whether they hide from custom or caprice, they are quite safe from interference. Much happier, in this respect, than the beasts in the Zoological Gardens. One may disturb the big elephant's repose with umbrella-points, or throw buns at the brown bear, but the "sea-gentlemen" are safe in their caves, and humanity flattens its nose against the glass wall of separation in vain.

When I looked into Tank No. 5, however, there were several swimming-crabs and sea-scorpions to be seen. The sea-scorpions are fish, but bold-faced, fiery, greedy little fellows. The swimming-crabs are said to be "the largest, strongest, and _hungriest_" of English crabs. What a thought for those they live on! Let us picture to ourselves the largest, strongest, and _hungriest_ of cannibals! Doubtless he would make short work even of the American Giant, as the swimming-crabs, by night, devour other crabs, larger but milder-tempered than themselves. It speaks volumes for the sea-scorpions, who are small fish, that they can hold their own in the same pool with the swimming-crabs.

Tank 4 contains big spider-crabs, who sit with their knees above their heads, winking at you with their eyes and feelers; or scramble out unexpectedly from dens and caves here and there, high up in the rocky sides of the pool.

Nos. 6, 7, and 8 contain fish.

It really is sad to think how completely our ideas on the subject of cod spring from the kitchen and the fish-kettle. (As to our cod-liver oil, we know no more how much of it has anything to do with cod-fish than we can guess where our milk and port-wine come from.) Poor cod! If of a certain social standing, it's odds if we will recognize any of him but his head and shoulders. I have seen him served up in country inns with a pickled walnut in the socket of each eye; and in life, and at home, he has the attentive, inquisitive, watchful, humorous eyes common to all fishes.

Fishes remind me rather of Chinese, who are also a cold-blooded race: slow, watchful, inquisitive, acquisitive, and full of the sense of humour. There are fishes in the Great Aquarium whose faces twinkle again with quiet fun.

The cod here seemed quite as much interested in looking at us through a glass window as we were in looking at them. They are tame, and have very large appetites--so tame, and so hungry, that the fish who live with them are at a disadvantage at meal-times, and it is feared that they must be removed.

These other fish are plaice, soles, brill, turbot, and skate. The skate love to lie buried over head and ears in the sand. The faintest outline of tail or a flapping fin betrays the spot, and you long for an umbrella-poke from some Zoological-Garden-frequenting old lady, to stir the lazy creature up; but it is impossible.

Suddenly, when you are as tired of waiting as Jack was when Coomara was "engaged thinking," the fin movement becomes more distinct, a cloud of sand rises into the water, and a grey-coated skate, with two ornamental knobs upon his tail, flaps slowly away across the pool.

Sometimes these flat-fish flap upwards to the surface, poke their noses into the other world, and then, like larks, having gone up with effort, let themselves easily down again to the ground.

As we were looking into No. 7, an ambitious little sole took into his head to climb up the rocks, in the caves of which dwell crusty crabs. By marvellously agile doubles of his flat little body, he scrambled a good way up. Then he fell, and two or three valiant efforts still proving vain, he gave it up.

"He's turned giddy!" shouted a man beside us, who, like every one else, was watching the sea-gentlemen with rapt interest.

Why the little sole tried rock climbing I don't know, and I doubt if he knew himself.

Tank 7 is full of Basse--glittering fish who keep their silver armour clean by scrubbing it among the stones. Like other prettily-dressed people, they look out of the window all along.

At Tanks 1, 2, and 3, your chief feelings will be curiosity and admiration. The sea-flowers and the worms are rather low in the scale of living things. Far be it from you to decide that there are any living creatures with whom a loving and intelligent patience will not at last enable us to hold communion. But though, when you put the point of your little finger towards a Crassy, he gives it a very affectionate squeeze, and seems rather anxious to detain it permanently, the balance of evidence favours the idea that his appetite rather than his affections are concerned, and that he has only mistaken you for his dinner.

At present our intercourse is certainly limited, and though the _Serpulæ_ and _Sabellæ_ have their heads out of their chimneys all along, there is no reason to suppose that they take the slightest interest in the human beings who peer at them through the glass.

But with the fishes it is quite another thing. When you can fairly look into eyes as bright and expressive as your own, a long stride has been taken towards friendly relations. You flatten your nose on one side of the glass, and Mr. Fish flattens his on the other. If you have the stoniest of British stares he will outstare you. You long to scratch his back, or show him some similar attention, and (if he be a cod) to ask him, as between friends, why on earth (I mean in sea) he wears that queer horn under his chin.

Now with the _Crustaceans_(hard-shelled sea-gentlemen) it is different again. So far as one feels friendly towards a fish it is a fellow feeling. You know people like this or that cod, as one knows people like certain sheep, dogs, and horses. And a very short acquaintance with fish convinces you that not only is there a type of face belonging to each species, but that individual countenances vary, as with us. It is said that shepherds know the faces of their sheep as well as of their other friends, and I have no doubt that the keeper of the Great Aquarium knows his cod apart quite well.

And if one's feeling for the _Crustaceans_--the crabs, lobsters, prawns, &c.--is different, it is not because one feels them to be less intelligent than fishes, but because their intelligence is altogether a mysterious, unfathomable, unmeasurable quantity. There's no saying what they don't know. There is no telling how much they can see. And the great puzzle is what they can be thinking of. For that the spiny lobsters are thinking, and "thinking very seriously about something," you can no more doubt than Jack did about the Merrow.

The spiny lobsters (commonly, but erroneously called craw-fish or cray-fish) and the common lobsters are in Tank No. 9.

Ah! that is a wonderful pool. The first glimpse of the spiny lobsters is enough for any one who has read of Coomara. We are among the Merrows at last.

I don't know that Coomara was a lobster, but I think he must have been a crustacean. Even his green hair reminds one of the spider-crabs; though matter-of-fact naturalists tell us that _their_ green hair is only seaweed which grows luxuriantly on their shells from their quiet habits, and because they are not given to burrowing, or cleaning themselves among the stones like the silver-coated basse. At one time, by the bye, it was supposed that they dressed themselves in weeds, whence they were called "vanity-crabs."

But the spiny lobsters--please to look at them, and see if you can so much as guess their age, their capabilities, or their intentions. I fancy that the difference between the feelings with which they and the fishes inspire us is much the same as that between our mental attitude towards hill-men or house-elves, and towards men and women.

The spiny lobsters are red. The common lobsters are blue. The spiny lobsters are large, their eyes are startlingly prominent, their powerful antennæ are longer and redder than Coomara's nose, and wave about in an inquisitive and somewhat threatening manner. When four or five of them are gathered together in the centre of the pool, sitting solemnly on their tails, which are tucked neatly under them, each with his ten sharp elbows a-kimbo "engaged thinking" (and perhaps talking) "very seriously about something," it is an impressive but _uncanny_ sight.

We witnessed such a conclave, sitting in a close circle, face to face, waving their long antennæ; and as we watched, from the shadowy caves above another merrow appeared. How he ever got his cumbersome coat of mail, his stiff legs, and long spines safely down the face of the cliff is a mystery. But he scrambled down ledge by ledge, bravely, and in some haste. He knew what the meeting was about, though we did not, and soon took his place, arranged his tail, his scales, his elbows, his cocked-hat, and what not, and fell a-thinking, like the rest. We left them so.

Most of the common lobsters were in their caves, from which they watched this meeting of the reds with fixed attention.

In their dark-blue coats, peering with their keen eyes from behind jutting rocks and the mouths of sea caverns, they looked somewhat like smuggler sailors!

Tanks 10 to 13 have fish in them. The Wrasses are very beautiful in colour. Most gorgeous indeed, if you can look at them in a particular way. Tank 32 has been made on purpose to display them. It is in another room.

No tank in the Aquarium is more popular than Tank 14. Enthusiastic people will sit down here with needlework or luncheon, and calmly wait for a good view of--the cuttle-fish!

Cuttle is the name for the whole race of cephalopods, and is supposed to be a corruption of the word cuddle, in the sense of hugging.

They are curious creatures, the one who favoured us with a good view of him being very like a loose red velvet pincushion with eight legs, and most of the bran let out.

Yet this strange, unshapely creature has a distinct brain in a soft kind of skull, mandibles like a parrot, and plenty of sense. His sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell are acute. He lies kicking his legs in the doorway of his favourite cavern, which he selected for himself and is attached to, for a provokingly long time before he will come out. When he does appear, a subdued groan of gratified expectation runs through the crowd in front of his window, as head over heels, hand over hand, he sprawls downwards, and moves quickly away with the peculiar gait induced by having suckers instead of feet to walk with.

Tank 15 contains eels. It seems to be a curious fact that fresh-water eels will live in sea-water. I should think, when they have once got used to the salt, they must find a pond very tasteless afterwards. They are night-feeders, as school-boys know well.

Tank 16. Fish--grey mullet. Tank 17. Prawns.

If with the fishes we had felt with friends, and with the lobsters as if with hobgoblins, with the prawns we seemed to find ourselves among ghosts.

A tank that seems only a pool for a cuttle-fish, or a cod, is a vast region where prawns and shrimps are the inhabitants. The caves look huge, and would hold an army of them. The rocks jut boldly out, and throw strange shadows on the pool. The light falls effectively from above, and in and out and round about go the prawns, with black eyes glaring from their diaphanous helmets, in colourless, translucent, if not transparent armour, and bristling with spears.

"They are like disembodied spirits," said my husband.

But in a moment more we exclaimed, "It's like a scene from Martin's mezzo-tint illustrations of the _Paradise Lost_. They are ghostly hosts gathering for battle."

This must seem a most absurd idea in connection with prawns; but if you have never seen prawns except at the breakfast-table, you must go to the Great Aquarium to learn how impressive is their appearance in real life.

The warlike group which struck us so forcibly had gathered rapidly from all parts of the pool upon a piece of flat table-rock that jutted out high up. Some unexplained excitement agitated the host; their innumerable spear-like antennæ moved ceaselessly. From above a ray of light fell just upon the table-rock where they were gathered, making the waving spears glitter like the bayonet points of a body of troops, and forming a striking contrast with the dark cliffs and overshadowed water below, from which stragglers were quickly gathering, some paddling across the deep pool, others scrambling up the rocks, and all with the same fierce and restless expression.

How I longed for a chance of sketching the scene!

Prawns are not quite such colourless creatures in the sea as they are here. Why they lose their colour and markings in captivity is not known. They seem otherwise well.

They are hungry creatures, and their scent is keen.

The shrimps keep more out of sight; they burrow in the sand a good deal. You know one has to look for fresh-water shrimps in a brook if one wants to find them.

In Tank 18 are our old friends the hermit-crabs. As a child, I think I believed that these curious creatures killed the original inhabitants of the shells which they take for their own dwelling. It is pleasant to know that this is not the case. The hermit-crab is in fact a sea-gentleman, who is so unfortunate as to be born naked, and quite unable to make his own clothes, and who goes nervously about the world, trying on other people's cast-off coats till he finds one to fit him.