66 ON THE COLORATION OF THE CHINA SEA. 



new and precise investigations of the Camjmnularicc having a 

 medusoid offspring, and therefore shall here avoid all useless 

 discussion of it. 



Memoir on #Ae Coloration of the China Sea. By M. Camille 

 Dareste. (From the Ann. des Sciences Naturelles, IV. Ser. 

 Tome i. p. 81.) 



We learn from the observations of M. Ehrenberg, and more 

 recently from those of MM. E. Dupont and Montagne, that 

 the w^aters of the Red Sea are, at certain epochs, coloured red 

 by the development, in prodigious quantities, of microscopical 

 Alga? belonging to a species described by the former of these 

 observers under the name of Trichodesmium erythrceum. 



These observations, which afford the best explanation of the 

 term Red Sea, attributed by some ancient geographers to the 

 aspect of the mountains bordering its shores when illuminated 

 by the rays of the sun, and by others, since the celebrated Juan 

 de Castro, to the transparency of its waters, which allows the 

 coral reefs to be visible in their clear depths, have a still 

 greater interest for naturalists ; they are one of the most re- 

 markable proofs of the immense development that microsco- 

 pical organisms can attain, and of their importance in the 

 physical history of the globe. 



There is no such thing as an exceptional fact in science. 

 The determination of a new fact, however strange it may at 

 first appear to us, ought always to lead to the knowledge of 

 other facts of the same nature which can be grouped round 

 the preceding one, as different effects arising from a single 

 cause. 



Moreover, since these observations have been made, it 

 has been thought that a great number of the accidental 

 colorations of sea-water, so often described by navigators, 

 might be thus explained. It might equally be expected that 

 similar phenomena would be more frequently observed and 

 descriJDed, from the moment that naturalists showed a scien- 

 tific interest in them. 



I owe to the kindness of M. Mollien, late Consul-general 

 of France at Havanna, and one of the Frenchmen who have 

 penetrated furthest into the interior of Africa, the opportunity 

 of studying a new fact of this kind, which from the conditions 

 under which it presented itself may one day open up an 

 interesting geographical question. 



M. Mollien observed last year that the China Sea was 

 coloured yellow and red over a large extent, and that this 

 coloi'ation was not continuous but in patches separated by 



