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Under elegant glass cases, fixed by copper rivets, were classed and labelled the most precious productions of the sea which had ever been presented to the eye of a naturalist. My delight as a professor may be conceived. The division containing the zoophytes presented the most curious specimens of the two groups of polypi and echinodermes.
Of the echinodermes, remarkable for their coating of spines, asteri, sea-stars, pantacrinae, comatules, asterophons, echini, holothuri, etc., represented individually a complete collection of this group. A somewhat nervous conchyliologist would certainly have fainted before other more numerous cases, in which were classified the specimens of molluscs.
No place could be more convenient for the observation of the Mollusca and Radiata than Cape Venus. At a few hundred paces from the shore is a coral reef, which at low water is completely dry. In the shoal water, between the reef and the shore, is found the greatest variety of the more brittle kinds of coral, and among their sometimes thick bushes, mollusca and echinodermes lie concealed.
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