98 THE NAUTILUS. 



laces for wading. Our tools are a geological hammer, a four pound 

 sledge, a crowbar, all the cans and buckets available, a pockel-full 

 of corked tubes and a pocket lens fastened to the waist with a key- 

 chain, such as bank clerks use. A big shooting bag is a handy 

 tiling to sling over the shoulder. A design for reef collecting which 

 we never put in practice was a belt like a soldier's cartridge belt to 

 hold tubes instead of cartridges. Not only could molluscs, worms, 

 etc., be packed apart, but such useful things as alcohol, formal, or 

 picric acid would be at hand in small quantities. In practice we 

 filled, say the left trouser pocket, with empty tubes. When a speci- 

 men is fouud it is important not to lose sight of it, and one hand 

 may be engaged holding the rock. With the free hand a tube is 

 taken, the cork pulled out with the teeth, the specimen bottled, the 

 tube filled with sea water and stowed in the right hand pocket. 



Now we pull in among the corals and jump overboard. " But 

 what is the thing like a barrel stranded yonder ? " "That, Mr. 

 Conglomerate, is a Tridacna gigas." A real, live, giant clam, with 

 jaws gaping like a crocodile, lying high and dry and loose upon the 

 reef. Between the jaws are living jewels of green and gold, thick 

 strewn on living velvet. With a convulsive jerk the shell half 

 closes and gaps again. "I've seen plenty bigger nor this ; do you 

 want him, Mr. Conchologist ? " asked the jib-sheet hand. ''Yes, 

 take that." So he drove the end of a board hard down in the centre 

 of the gape. That disabled the monster. The cook plunged in a 

 butcher's knife, dexterously peeled back the gorgeous mantle, slipped 

 off the huge adductor muscle and unceremoniously threw out the 

 carcass, bigger than a leg of mutton, on the sand. 



The conchologist who ordered the execution feels, well, just a 

 qualm of remorse, as the men hoist the shell to the boat. Anyhow 

 he never collected a bigger shell. And then for an instant, the sun- 

 shine and the sea were swept away and the magic of memory flashed 

 out a picture of distant lands and days; faint incense, cold and 

 gloom, past rows of marble pillars and stained glass windows, to a 

 small conchologist gaping with amazement at his first Ttidacna, the 

 the holy-water basins in St. Sulpice. 



Again the ripple on the water, the sunshine and the sea. All 

 about the giant lay lesser clams, Hippopus. " How do you tell one 

 from the other, captain?" "Why, look at the meat," says he. 

 And sure enough, we saw that Hippopus lacked the jewelled eyes of 



