We are on the narrow shingle-beach of Maidencombe, or, sometimes, more
familiarly, Minnicombe; one of the slight indentations of this line of
coast, which, from the mouth of the Exe to Start Point, runs nearly
north and south, and so looks right up-channel, and receives the full
violence of the keen and blustering east winds.
Away down the gentle slope till we come to the line where the wavelets
are kissing the rock, where the next step would put us into King
Canute’s circumstances, where the sea is washing to and fro the
shaggy weed, and just preventing it from assuming the shrivelled and
blackened condition, into which the tufts a little above are fast
falling under the baking powers of this June sun; and here, on these
very weeds, now submerged, now dry, are crawling some uncouth beings
of a dark liver colour or purple-brown hue. The creature passes by the
name of Sea-hare;[66] a not inappropriate designation, for I have
often seen it in postures when the resemblance to a couching hare was
spontaneously suggested. Around Weymouth, where it is common, the
fishermen and shore-boys call it the Sea-cow; which is not a bad hit,
though not so happy as that of hare. In each case, the feature which
strikes the imagination and suggests the comparison with the quadruped,
is the pair of tentacles which stand erect, but a little diverging,
from the back of the head, and which consist of an expanded lamina
infolded at the base, and, as it were, cut off slantingly, so as to
look like a hare’s ears. There are, indeed, two pairs of tentacles
of similar structure; but the front pair are more commonly stretched
forward horizontally, and held near the ground, so as to be much less
conspicuous.
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