April 1, 1S69.] 



HAKDWICKE'S SCIENCE GOSSIP. 



73 



PHBONIMA. 



By MAJOR HOLLAND, R.M.L.I. 



T is a still, soft 

 summer evening, 

 Her Majesty's 

 stately frigate is 

 gliding silently 

 over the un- 

 ruffled bosom of 

 the South Pa- 

 cific : she is on no warlike 

 errand now, though her artil- 

 lery is ready at the roll of the 

 drum to hurl forth deadly 

 ^^/^ 5ji h-on showers if need be ; she 

 * A\% «&X^ is on a blessedly beneficent 

 mission, fathoming the deep 

 bed of ocean, searching for 

 treacherous sunken rocks and 

 unknown shoals, and marking 

 down the unseen dangers in 

 the new charts that are being- 

 constructed on board, to direct 

 peaceful traders across the wide waters and to 

 warn them where hidden perils must be guarded 

 against. Hands accustomed to sword and rifle are 

 working the deep-sea-lead ; officers are registering 

 notes of winds and currents and the variations of 

 the compass, and taking astronomical observations 

 to fix the latitude and longitude of mountain-peaks 

 and headlands. They have left the Pijis, and are 

 south of the Friendly Islands ; " Michaeloff," an out- 

 lier of a coral group, is in sight on the starboard-bow ; 

 the towing-net, which has been trailing smoothly 

 astern, has just been drawn in by the weather-beaten 

 old quartermaster, and a sun-brown, seafaring natu- 

 ralist is bending over it, eagerly searching for and 

 sorting out his prizes : he has got a good haul, he is 

 in a glorious cruising ground, where nature seems to 

 have done her very utmost to fulfil the fiat of her 

 Creator, " let the waters bring forth abundantly the 

 moving creature that hath life." 



Eh ! what strange forms he has got ! What won- 

 drous living things he is transferring to his glass jar 

 No. 52. 



of clear blue sea-water— the sea is blue here, and 

 not of a muddy green. We may not stop to tell of 

 one-twentieth of the marvellous creatures he has 

 secured ; but here is one — stick a one ! — for all the 

 world like a new-boiled prawn with its head and 

 shoulders jammed into a mother- o' -pearl thimble 

 and its tail flapping restlessly outside, sending it 

 tumbling head over heels as if making violent 

 efforts to extricate itself. We must have a gossip 

 about this ocean stranger : a stranger he, or rather 

 she, is in her living state to all our marine zoologists 

 whose personal operations do not extend to the 

 high seas, they never see her "in the flesh," but 

 have to form their opinions respecting her and her 

 race from dried mummies preserved on glass slides, 

 or from sodden and sometimes mutilated specimens 

 sent home " from abroad " in pickle bottles. 



This is an amphipodous crustacean, a Phronima, 

 apparently the Phronima sedentaria of Latreille ; 

 though sedentary in the ordinary sense she is not, 

 but one of the liveliest little creatures imaginable, 

 full" of comic capers, throwing summersaults all day 

 long with her tub on her head, like Diogenes gone 

 mad, or a street acrobat. But before we proceed 

 any farther, let us refresh our memories on crusta- 

 cean matters in general. 



The skeleton of the Crustacea is external, and is 

 made up of the tegumentary envelope, which in 

 some of the class always continues soft, but in the 

 greater portion is very firm, forming a shelly case or 

 armour, in which all the soft parts are contained. 

 In many (our captive of the towing-net being one 

 of them) it remains semi-corneous, in a condition 

 very similar to that of insects, with which, more- 

 over, it corresponds very closely in chemical com- 

 position; chitine in combination with albumen 

 being the principal elements. The pigmentum, 

 which gives the various tints, is an amorphous 

 matter diffused through the outer layer of the 

 superficial membrane, being secreted like this by 

 the corium. The epidermic layer hardened in dif- 

 ferent degrees is the part which mainly constitutes 



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