ciiAr. I.] BERMUDAS TO MADEIRA. 17 



traortlinaiy way, both in form and coloring, their floating hab- 

 itat, and consequently one another, that we can well imagine 

 their deceiving both the birds and the fishes. Among the most 

 cnrions of the gnlf-weed animals is the grotesque little fish An- 

 tennarius marmoratus (Fig. 4-i, vol. i., p. 188), which finds its 

 nearest English ally in the "fishing frog" {Lophius ])iscatori- 

 us), often thrown up on the coast of Britain, and conspicuous 

 for the disproportionate size of its head and jaws, and for its 

 general ugliness and rapacity. None of the examples of the 

 gulf-weed Antennarius which we have found are more than 50 

 mm. in length, and we are still uncertain whether such individ- 

 uals have attained their full size. It is this little fish which 

 constructs the singular nests of gulf-weed, bound in a bundle 

 with cords of a viscid secretion, wdiich have been already men- 

 tioned as abundant in the path of the Gulf-stream. 



Sc'dlcea pelagica^ one of the shell-less mollusca, is also a fre- 

 quent inhabitant of the gulf-weed. A little short-tailed crab 

 {Nautilograpsus minutus) swarms on the weed and on every 

 floating object, and it is odd to see how the little creature usu- 

 ally corresponds in color with whatever it may happen to in- 

 habit. These gulf-weed animals, fishes, mollusca, and crabs, do 

 not simply imitate the colors of the gulf-weed ; to do so would 

 be to produce suspicious patches of continuous olive ; they are 

 all blotched over with bright opaque white, the blotches gener- 

 ally rounded, sometimes irregular, but at a little distance abso- 

 lutely undistinguishable from the patches of Membranipora on 

 the weed. Mr. Murray, who has the general superintendence 

 of our surface work, brings in curious stories of the habits of 

 the little crabs. He observes that although every floating thing 

 upon the surface is covered with them, they are rarely met with 

 swimming free, and that whenever they are dislodged aiid re- 

 moved a little way from their resting-place they immediately 

 make the most vigorous efforts to regain it. The other day he 

 amused himself teasing a crab which had established itself on 



II.— 2 



