d to have recovered their
composure, my work began. My eyes were extremely keen and
powerful, though they were vexatiously near-sighted. Of no use in
examining objects at any distance, in investigating a minute
surface, my vision was trained to be invaluable. The shallow pan,
with our spoils, would rest on a table near the window, and I,
kneeling on a chair opposite the light, would lean over the
surface until everything was within an inch or two of my eyes.
Often I bent, in my zeal, so far forward that the water touched
the tip of my nose and gave me a little icy shock. In this
attitude, an idle spectator might have formed the impression that
I was trying to wash my head and could not quite summon up
resolution enough to plunge. In this odd pose I would remain for
a long time, holding my breath and examining with extreme care
every atom of rock, every swirl of detritus. This was a task
which my Father could only perform by the help of a lens, with
which, of course, he took care to supplement my examination. But
that my survey was of use, he has himself most handsomely
testified in his _Actinologia Britannica_, where he expresses his
debt to the 'keen and well-practised eye of my little son'. Nor,
if boasting is not to be excluded, is it every eminent biologist,
every proud and masterful F.R.S., who can lay his hand on his
heart and swear that, before reaching the age of ten years, he
had added, not merely a new species, but a new genus to the
British fauna. That however, the author of these pages can do,
who, on 29 June 1859, discovered a tiny atom,--and ran in the
greatest agitation to announce the discovery of that object 'as a
form with which he was unacquainted',--which figures since then
on all lists of sea-anemones as phellia murocincta, or the walled
corklet. Alas! that so fair a swallow should have made no
biological summer in after-life.

These delicious agitations by the edge of the salt-sea wave must
have greatly improved my health, which however was still looked
upon as fragile. I was loaded with coats and comforters, and
strolled out between Miss Marks and Mary Grace Burmington, a
muffled ball of flannel. This alone was enough to give me a look
of delicacy which the 'saints', in their blunt way, made no
scruple of commenting upon to my face. I was greatly impressed by
a conversation held over my bed one evening by the servants. Our
cook, Susan, a person of enormous size, and Kate, the tattling,
tiresom