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The asterias, or star-stone, is a very beautiful variety, in which the colour is generally of a reddish violet, with an opalescent lustre. A sapphire of ten carats weight is considered to be worth fifty guineas. Jameson. The blue topaz, or Brazilian sapphire, is of recent introduction. The white topaz considerably exceeds rock crystal in lustre, and in Brazil is called mina nova.

Presently they saw him and Aquarius cautiously stealing along on the other side of the moat, but they saw nothing more; and Mr Asterias returning, told them, with accents of great disappointment, that he had had a glimpse of a mermaid, but she had eluded him in the darkness, and was gone, he presumed, to sup with some enamoured triton, in a submarine grotto.

Mr Toobad is gone too, and a strange lady with him. 'Gone! 'Gone. And Mr and Mrs Hilary, and Miss O'Carroll: they are all gone. There is nobody left but Mr Asterias and his son, and they are going to-night. 'Then I have lost them both. 'Won't you come to dinner? 'No. 'Shall I bring your dinner here? 'Yes. 'What will you have? 'A pint of port and a pistol. 'A pistol!

'But, seriously, Mr Asterias, said the Honourable Mr Listless, 'do you positively believe there are such things as mermaids? Most assuredly; and tritons too. What! things that are half human and half fish? Precisely. They are the oran-outangs of the sea.

There were golden-brown danais, with their black-striped wings, jetty troilus with an attempt at trailers, big asterias, velvety black with longer trails and wide bands of yellow dots. Coenia were most numerous of all and to the Harvester wonderfully attractive in rich, subdued colours with a wealth of markings and eye spots.

Mr Asterias was accompanied by his son, to whom he had given the name of Aquarius flattering himself that he would, in the process of time, become a constellation among the stars of ichthyological science.

Mr Toobad's alarm so bewildered his senses, that, missing the door, he threw up one of the windows, jumped out in his panic, and plunged over head and ears in the moat. Mr Asterias and his son, who were on the watch for their mermaid, were attracted by the splashing, threw a net over him, and dragged him to land.

The Honourable Mr Listless, the Reverend Mr Larynx, Mr Flosky, Mr Asterias, and Aquarius, were attracted by the tumult to the scene of action, and were appealed to severally and conjointly by the respective disputants.

I had captured what I afterward learned was an Asterias, that seemed slightly different from any previous specimen, and a yellow swallow-tail, my first Papilio Turnus. The yellow one was the largest, most beautiful butterfly I ever had seen.

But will you allow me, Mr Asterias, to inquire into the cui bono of all the pains and expense you have incurred to discover a mermaid? The cui bono, sir, is the question I always take the liberty to ask when I see any one taking much trouble for any object.