32 



THE SEA. 



observed to be covered with foam and blood, and singular thing a strong odour of musk 

 was inhaled by the spectators. . . . The musket-shots not having produced tha 

 desired results, harpoons were employed, but they took no hold on the soft, impalpable 

 flesh of the marine monster. When it escaped from the harpoon, it dived under the ship 

 and came up again at the other side. They succeeded, at last, in getting the harpoon 

 to bite, and in passing a bowling-hitch round the posterior part of the animal. But 

 when they attempted to hoist it out of the water, the rope penetrated deeply into the 



2 3 



4 



OBJECTS OF INTEREST BROUGHT HOME BY THE " CHA1LENGER." 



Fig. 1. Shell of Globigerina (highly magnified). Fig. 2. Ophioglypha biillata (six times the size in nature). Fig. Z.Euplectella 



Suberea (popularly " Venus's Flower-basket "). Fig. 4. Deidamia leptodactyla (a Blind Lobster). 



(From " The Voyage of the Challenger," by permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co.) 



flesh, and separated it into two parts, the head, with the arms and tentacles, dropping into 

 the sea and making off, while the fins and posterior parts were brought on board; they 

 weighed about forty pounds. The crew were eager to pursue, and would have launched 

 a boat, but the commander refused, fearing that the animal might capsize it. The object 

 was not, in his opinion, one in which he could risk the lives of his crew." M. Moquin 

 Tandon, commenting on M. Berthelot's recital, considers "that this colossal mollusc was 

 sick and exhausted at the time by some recent struggle with some other monster of the 

 deep, which would account for its having quitted its native rocks in the deaths of the 

 ocean, Otherwise it would have been more active in its movements, or it would have 





