Stray Impressions of the Marine Invertebrates of 
Singapore and Neighbouring Islets. 
By F. P. Beprorp, 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 
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