OCEAN TREASURES. 81 



of the Philippine Islands and Japan, to which it was thought to be confined, and 

 its discovery so much nearer home was hailed with delight. It has a most graceful form, 

 consisting of a slightly curved conical tube, eight or ten inches in height, contracted beneath 

 to a blunt point. The walls are of light tracery, resembling opaque spun glass, covered with 

 a lace-work of delicate pattern. The lower end is surrounded by an upturned fringe of lustrous 

 fibres, and the wider end is closed by a lid of open network. These beautiful objects of nature 

 make most charming ornaments for a drawing-room, but have to be kept under a glass case, as 

 they are somewhat frail. In their native element they lie buried in the mud. They were 

 afterwards found to be " the most characteristic inhabitants of the great depths all over the 

 world." Early in the voyage, no lack of living things were brought up strange-looking fish, 

 with their eyes blown nearly out of their heads by the expansion of the air in their air-bladders, 

 whilst entangled among the meshes were many star-fish and delicate zoophytes, shining with a 

 vivid phosphorescent light. A rare specimen of the clustered sea-polyp, twelve gigantic 

 polyps, each with eight long fringed arms, terminating in a close cluster on a stalk or stem 

 three feet high, was obtained. " Two specimens of this fine species were brought from the 

 coast of Greenland early in the last century ; somehow these were lost, and for a century the 

 animal was never seen." Two were brought home by one of the Swedish Arctic expeditions, 

 and these are the only specimens ever obtained. One of the lions of the expedition was not 

 " a rare sea-fowl," but a transparent lobster, while a new crustacean, perfectly blind, which 

 feels its way with most beautifully delicate claws, was one of the greatest curiosities obtained. 

 Of these wonders, and of some geological points determined, more anon. But they did not 

 even sight the sea-serpent, much less attempt to catch it. Jules Verne's twenty miles of 

 inexhaustible pearl-meadows were evidently missed, nor did they even catch a glimpse of his 

 gigantic oyster, with the pearl as big as a cocoa-nut, and worth 10,000,000 francs. They 

 could not, with Captain Nemo, dive to the bottom and land amid submarine forests, where 

 tigers and cobras have their counterparts in enormous sharks and vicious cephalopods. Victor 

 Hugo's " devil-fish " did not attack a single sailor, nor did, indeed, any formidable cuttle-fish 

 take even a passing peep at the Challenger, much less attempt to stop its progress. Does 

 the reader remember the story recited both by Figuier and Moquin Tandon,* concerning 

 one of these gigantic sea-monsters, which should have a strong basis of truth in it, as it 

 was laid before the French Academic des Sciences by a lieutenant of their navy and a French 

 consul ? 



The steam-corvette Alecton, when between Teneriffe and Madeira, fell in with a 

 gigantic cuttle-fish, fifty feet long in the body, without counting its eight formidable 

 arms covered with suckers. The head was of enormous size, out of all proportion to the 

 body, and had eyes as large as plates. The other extremity terminated in two fleshy 

 lobes or fins of great size. The estimated weight of the whole creature was 4,000 Ibs., 

 and the flesh was soft, glutinous, and of a reddish-brick colour. "The commandant, 

 wishing, in the interests of science, to secure the monster, actually engaged it in battle. 

 Numerous shots were aimed at it, but the balls traversed its flaccid and glutinous mass 

 without causing it any vital injury. But after one of these attacks, the waves were 



* In their popular works on the sea, " The Ocean World," and "The World of the Sea." 



