262 Mr. H, J. Carter on the Red Colouring Matter of the Sea. 



passing into a golden tint, when the oily appearance, so often 

 noticed on the surface of the sea, might be produced ; so also 

 the green colour may precede the change into brown and red, 

 as stated in parts of the ' Memoire' under reference, extracted 

 from Parry and Scoresby^s journals. Scoresby, too, notices that 

 the animalcule was " paraboloidal," and he gives measurements 

 equally small with those of a Peridinium. 



On the brown colour a word also is necessary. This, which 

 probably depends on the presence of a Peridinium in the sea, 

 certainly does so on land, for I have had ocular demonstration 

 of it in a freshwater tank at Bombay, where, in the beginning 

 of February 1857, it not only turned the water quite brown, but 

 imparted a smell and insipid taste to it, which almost rendered 

 it undrinkable. Professor Allman has described the same phse- 

 nomenon from equal evidence, in the ponds of the Phoenix Park, 

 Dublin*; but the figure he gives of that Peridinium, though 

 very like, is not the same as that of the species of Bombay, 



Nor should I omit to notice here the peruginous green colour 

 which frequently occurs in our tanks, from the presence chiefly 

 of a little Alga called Flos-aquce, with which the acicular, fusi- 

 form Aphanizomenon Flos-aqua: (Linn.) and curled-up, bead-like 

 Monormia intricata (Berk.) are plentifully mingled. This occurs 

 so generally and so abundantly, as frequently to render the 

 water not only undrinkable, but to produce an intolerable stench 

 by its putrefaction — facts which we cannot help associating 

 with the blood-red water of Egypt; and when we add to this 

 the following passage from an eye-witness of a similar occurrence 

 at Porebunder, on the coast of Khattyvvar, where red water is 

 extremely common, viz. "the colour of the sea- water on Satur- 

 day evening last, the 27th October, 1849, was changed from its 

 usual tint to a deep red, emitting a most foul smell ; the fish 

 speedily were all destroyed, and were washed upon the beach in 

 large quantities, &c.t" — we cannot help ascribing this, inde- 

 pendently of the conjecture of the narrator that it might be 

 owing to " some submarine eruption of mud, &c.,'^ to the pro- 

 cess of oleaginous development and change of colour above 

 mentioned in some animalcule, most probably a Peridinium, and 

 of realizing, at the same time, the (to me) previously incompre- 

 hensible ]\Iosaic account of the plague of Egypt given in the 

 following verses : — 



"and all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood." 



"And the fish that ^oas in the river died; and the river stank, and the 

 Egyptians could not (hink of the water of the river ; and there was blood 

 throughout all the land of Egypt." — Exodus, vii. 20, 21. 



* Trans, jficroscop. 8oc. Lond. vol. iii. 1855. 

 t Proceedings Bombay Geograph. Soc. loc. cit. 



