266 THE CORAL LANDS OF THE PACIFIC. 



satisfied with sticking fast, but wherever it clings it burns like 

 a blister ; and upon any part of the human skin produces im- 

 mediate and painful inflammation. Yet this hideous slug is 

 worth in China from 80 to 100 a ton. The other varieties 

 of this remarkable inhabitant of the deep content themselves 

 with squirting out the water from their intestines. From their 

 way of living, one would expect this to be perfectly harmless, 

 but, like the similar discharge of a toad, if a drop of this 

 liquid enters the human eye, it produces a sensation as if of 

 contact with red-hot coal, resulting in a violent and dangerous 

 inflammation. If inoculated into any abrasion of the skin, 

 the consequences are still more serious. Cases are known in 

 the Pacific of men very nearly losing their eyesight and suffer- 

 ing weeks of pain through this cause. It has been generally 

 supposed that this mollusc is of slow growth. The lecJie-de- 

 mer fishers that I met are of a contrary opinion. The slugs 

 will increase from 1 inch in length to nearly 9 inches in 

 almost less than three months. They have other peculiarities 

 besides these I have enumerated. For instance, they are not 

 found everywhere upon a coral reef or lagoon bottom, but in 

 great patches, which proves the beche-de-mer to be a gregarious 

 and sociable animal. They undoubtedly possess also a certain 

 degree of intelligence which is evident from existing facts, but 

 which seems very hard to explain. These creatures, as far as 

 we know, have no eyes, and yet have some means of com- 

 municating with each other, and a very exact knowledge of 

 one another's proximity. Often, for instance, fishers, after 

 having discovered in any place a greater multitude of these 

 slugs than it was possible at once to carry home to the curing- 

 houses, would lay them down separately far apart from one an- 

 other, with the intent of coming for them on the morrow. 

 When they did so, they would find them all in batches as they 



