The Nautilus 
VOL. VIII. 
DECEMBER, 1894. 
No. 8 
A SHELL HUNT FORTY FEET UNDER THE SEA. 
BY C. HEDLEY, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA. 
To widen the fairway of Port Jackson (Australia), a submarine 
reef is being removed. An opportunity of going down with the 
divers employed thereon was kindly offered to myself and a scien¬ 
tific friend by the officer in charge of the operations. So tempting 
an invitation was, of course, accepted with delight. Often in im¬ 
agination had we wandered on the ocean floor, peering into ghastly 
wrecks of ships sunk long ago, fighting with some huge shark or 
monstrous octopus, and gathering treasures of science or heaps of 
gold. Now our dreams were to come true and we were indeed to 
tread that fairy-land. We might not have the luck of the mariner 
in the song who 
“ Fell overboard in a gale, 
And found down below where the seaw r eeds grow, 
Such a lovely maid with a tail,” 
but we should certainly pluck strange growths at the bottom of the 
sea as one might pick flowers in a meadow. 
A trim launch sped with us from Circular Quay down the famous 
Sydney Harbor, past bay after bay, some lined with wharves and 
shipping and some with trees growing to the water’s edge, by rocks 
and white sandy beaches, past point and headland gay with villas 
and gardens, or sombre with eucalypt forest. So familiar was the 
