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Confessions of a Beachcomber

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microscopic keenness at the points, climbing stiffly along the edges of rocks by a few of the stilt-like needles, and a very fair figure of the ECHINUS is presented. As a curious and beautiful creature he is full of interest, and as an adjunct to one's diet he is, in due season, full of excellent meat. We take the ugly and forbidding oyster with words of gratitude and flattery on our lips, and why pass with disrespect the creature that is beautiful and wonderful as well as savoury? To enjoy it to perfection, extricate the creature from his lurking place far down in the blue crevice of the coral, with a fish-spear. Don't experiment with your fingers. On the gunwale of your boat divest it of its slender black spines, and with a knife fairly divide the spheroid body, and a somewhat nauseous-looking meat is disclosed; but no more objectionable in appearance than the substance of a fully ripe passion fruit. The flavour! Ah, the flavour! It surpasseth the delectable oyster. It hath more of the savour and piquancy of the ocean. It clingeth to the palate and purgeth it of grosser tastes. It recalleth the clean and marvellous creature, whose life has been spent in cool coral grottoes, among limestone and the salty essences of the pure and sparkling sea, and if you be wise and devout and grateful, you forthwith give praise for the enjoyment of a new and rare sensation. The ECHINUS is said to be essentially herbivorous, but my cursory observation leads me to the opinion (very humbly proffered) that it fulfils a definite purpose in the order of Nature, too, and depends for sustenance, or for the building up of its structure, upon certain constituents of the coral. Does it not break and grind down to powder the ramparts of coral? Clumsy and ill-shaped as it appears to be in other respects, it has jaws of wonderful design, and known to the ancients as "Aristotle's lantern." They are composed of five strips of bony substance, with enamel-like tips overlying each other in the centre of the disc-shaped mouth. With this splendid instrument the creature grips and breaks off or gnaws off, or bores out crumbs of coral which you find, apparently in process of digestion, as you render him an acceptable morsel. Scientific observers affirm that by means of an acid which the ECHINUS secretes, it disintegrates the rock, and that the jaws are used merely to clear away the softened rubbish. How is it then that the globular cavity is often well-ballasted with tiny crisp chunks of coral rock? Possibly to the assimilation of the lime is due, in some measure, the singularly sweet and expressive savour. So we see the coral-reef-building polyps toiling with but little rest, almost incessantly labouring to raise architectural devices of infinite design, and other creatures as industriously tearing them down to form the solid foundation of continents. Another species of ECHINUS eludes its enemies by the adoption of a cumbersome and forbidding mask. Ineffectively armed, the spines though numerous being short and frail, it holds empty bivalve shells on its uppermost part, The unstudied accumulation of debris--a fair sample of the surrounding ocean floor--would fail to fix notice, but that it moves bodily and without apparent cause. Inspection penetrates the disguise. Wheresoever the ECHINUS goes--its progress is infinitely slow--it carries a self-imposed burden--the refuse of dead and inanimate things--that it may, by imposition upon its foes, continue in the way of life. SHARKS AND SKIPPERS Local blacks have no fear of sharks. They take every care to avoid crocodiles, exercising great caution and circumspection when crossing inlets and tidal creeks. So shrewd are their observations that they will describe distinctive marks of particular crocodiles and indicate their favourite resorts. Their indifference to sharks is founded on the belief that those which inhabit shallow water among the islands never attack a living man. Blacks remain for hours together in the water on the reefs when beche-de-mer fishing, and the record of an attack is rare indeed. They are far more fearful of the monstrous groper (PROMICROPS ITAIARA), which lying inert among the coral blocks and boulders of the Barrier Reef, bolts anything and everything which comes its way, and which will follow a man in the water with dogged determination, foreign to the nervous, suspicious shark. Recently a vigorous young black boy was attacked by a groper while diving for beche-de-mer. The fish took the boy's head into its capacious mouth, mauling him severely about the head and shoulders, and but for his valiant and determined struggles would doubtless have succeeded in killing him. Such an incident as the following does not convince blacks that the sharks of the Barrier Reef are dangerous. The captain of a beche-de-mer cutter was paddling in a dinghy along the edge of a detached reef not many miles from Dunk Island, while several of his boys were swimming and diving. Suddenly one of them was seized and so terribly mutilated that he died in a few minutes. Although the captain was within 8 or 10 feet of the boy, and three of his mates not more than a few yards off, though all were wearing swimming goggles which enable them when diving to distinguish objects at a considerable range, though the sea was calm and clear and the water barely 10 feet deep, no one saw a shark or any other fish capable of inflicting such injuries as had caused the death of "Jimmy," nor was there any disturbance of the surface of the water. Years before a countryman of the unfortunate "Jimmy" was mauled by a small shark, but got away, though crippled for life. By some quaint process of reasoning the companions of the boy who was killed connected his death with the attack upon the other, the scene of which was 200 miles distant, and became convinced that he had been the victim of another kind altogether "--a sort of mysterious marine debil-debil," not known to entire satisfaction by the best-informed black boy, and quite beyond the comprehension of the dull-witted white man. Having thus conclusively to their minds set at naught the theory that a shark was responsible, it was absolutely unreasonable to fear sharks generally. Why should they blame a shark when it was established beyond doubt that nothing but a

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