Ah, you should have seen my Amphitrite!  She bore her plumy crown so grandly, you would have said she was indeed the queen of Actiniae.  But, alas! she could not brook imprisonment, and, pining for the unwalled grottoes of Poseidon, she drooped and died.

Behind that sheltering rock, and overhung with sea-weed, there is a dark, deep cave, the chosen abode of Giant Grim.  Push one of those soldiers to the mouth of the den and wait the result.  At the first movement made by the unwitting trespasser on guarded ground, two long, flexile rods are thrust out, reconnoitring right and left.  Two huge claws follow, lighted up by two great glaring eyes.  At last the whole creature emerges, seizes the intruder, and bears him swiftly away, far beyond his jealously kept premises.  With dogged mien he stalks gravely back to his stronghold.  You exclaim, “It is a Lobster!” A lobster truly; but saw you ever a lobster with such presence before?  Does he resemble the poor bewildered crustaceans you have seen bunched together at a fish-stall?  Bears he any likeness to the innocent-looking edibles you have seen lying on a dish, by boiling turned, like the morn, from black to red?

Those ghost-like Prawns are near relatives of the giant.  See them, gliding so gracefully from under the arch, disappearing under the waving Ulva, and floating into sight again from behind the cliff.  At night, if you look at them athwart a lighted candle, their eyes are seen to glow like living rubies.  As they row silently and swiftly towards you, you might fancy each a fairy gondola, with gem-lighted prow.

A quick dashing startles you, and you see a Scallop rising to the top of the water with zigzag jerks, and immediately sinking to the sand again, on the side opposite that whence it started.  There it rests with expanded branchiae and moving cilia; a rude passer-by jostles it, and with startled sensitiveness it shrinks from the outer world and hides behind a stony mask.

The small, greenish, rough-coated creature, so like a flattened burr, is an Echinus.  It is hardly domiciliated, being a new-comer, and creeps restlessly across the glass.

Under this sand-mound some one lies self-buried,—­not dead, but only hiding from the crowd in this bustling watering-place.  He must learn that there is no lasting retirement in Newport; so tap with a stick at his lodging.  With anger vexed, forth rushes the Swimming-Crab and dashes away from the unwelcome visitor.  As if he knew a bore to be the most persistent of hunters, he plies his paddles with rapid beat until far from his invaded chamber.  His swimming is more like the fluttering of a butterfly than the steady poise of a fish.  Pretty as is his variegated coat by day, it is far more beautiful by night; then his limbs shine with metallic lustre, and every joint seems tinged with molten gold.

I could spend the day in showing you my Aquarium;—­the merry antics of the blithe Minnows; the slow wheeling of the less vivacious Sticklebacks; the beautiful siphon of the Quahaug and the Clam; the starry disk of the Serpula; the snug tent of the Limpet; the lithe proboscis of the busy Buccinum; the erect and rapid march of his little flesh-tinted cousin; the slow Horsefoot, balancing his huge umbrella as he goes; the——­But I cannot name them all.