Stray Impressions of the Marine Invertebrates of 

 Singapore and Neighbouring Islets. 



By F. P. Bedford, M.A. 



Nearly all the facts mentioned in the following account are probably 

 well known, but so few English naturalists seem to have visited the 

 Malay Peninsula with the object of studying its marine invertebrate 

 fauna, and my own preconceptions of marine tropical life derived from 

 lectures, books, and specimens, which more or less faintly recalled 

 their original form and colour, were so vague and so often erroneous, 

 that I cannot help thinking that there may be many who, from lack 

 of the opportunity or possibly the desire to travel in the tropics, may 

 be in a similar predicament. If this is so, a few of the impressions 

 produced on one's mind may not be entirely devoid of interest. 



No doubt all who are interested in the subject will have read such 

 books as Professor Hickson's "Naturalist in North Celebes " and Professor 

 Semper's " Animal Life," books written in a most suggestive and lucid 

 style, made the more convincing by the intimate practical knowledge 

 which the authors possessed of the animals they describe. I cannot 

 of course pretend to any such knowledge on my own part, and I 

 would not venture to traverse ground which has already been so ad- 

 mirably reconnoitred, but there is a purely superficial aspect of the 

 subject which some months' collecting in the neighbourhood of Singa- 

 pore has impressed on my mind, and which may be worth attempting 

 to describe before it has become obscured by the details which assume 

 an increasingly prominent position in one's thoughts the longer one 

 collects. 



One of the first impressions produced when one either turns over stones 

 or digs at low-tide, or dredges or trawls in the sea beyond, or examines 

 the results of surface tow-nettings after dark, is the marked similarity 

 of the fauna to that of our English coasts. At or near the surface at 

 night are Appendiculariae, Copepoda, Malacostracan larvae, Chaetognatha, 

 Medusae, Siphonophora, and Ctenophora, many of which, to the naked 

 eye at least, are quite indistinguishable from those which might be 

 obtained in a similar way at Plymouth or Port Erin, such forms as 

 Heteropoda, Pteropoda, and the larger pelagic Tunicates being by no 



no 



