ECHINODERMATA. 299 



lings the pekoul, or a hundred and twenty-five pounds. He estimated 

 his cargo to be worth about a hundred and twenty pounds. The 

 fishing had occupied him and his crew three months. From the earliest 

 times this commerce has belonged exclusively to the Malay fishermen, 

 and it will always be difficult for Europeans to compete with them. 

 The Malay vessels are equipped on the most economical principle, and 

 the men are wanting neither in sobriety, intelligence, or activity. 



" It was nearly four o'clock when the Malays finished their opera- 

 tions. In less than half an hour they had embarked their cargo ; the 

 tents were struck, and, together with the boilers, carried back to the 

 boats, which were already preparing to set sail. At eight o'clock in 

 the evening they hoisted sail and left the bay." 



Some idea may be formed of the extent and importance of the 

 Holothuria fishing by the number of ships which it attracts in this 

 part of the East. Captain King assures us that two hundred vessels 

 annually leave Madagascar to fish for the sea slug, as it is sometimes 

 called. Captain Flinders, being on the coast of Australia, learnt that 

 a fleet of sixty vessels, having a hundred men on board, had left 

 Madagascar two months previously in the same pursuit. 



Among the Holothurias, one particular genus, the Synapta, is 

 distinguished from others of the family by the absence of the am- 

 bulacral feet, and by the fact of its uniting both sexes in one indi- 

 vidual. This remarkable Echinoderm, Synapta duvernea, is repre- 

 sented in PL. XI. M. Quatrefages, who discovered it in the Channel, 

 gives the following description of it in his great work, " Le Souvenirs 

 d'un Naturaliste." (t Imagine," he says, " a cylinder of rose-coloured 

 crystal, as much as eighteen inches long and more than an inch in 

 diameter, traversed in all its length by five narrow ribbons of white 

 silk, and its head surmounted by a living flower, whose twelve tentacles 

 of purest white fall behind in a graceful curve. In the centre of these 

 tissues, which rival in their delicacy the most refined products of the 

 loom, imagine an intestine of the thinnest gauze gorged from one 

 end to the other with coarse grains of granite, the rugged points and 

 sharp edge of which are perfectly perceptible to the naked eye. 



" But what most struck me at first in this animal was, that it seemed 

 literally to have no other nourishment than the coarse sand by which 

 it was surrounded. And then when, armed with scalpel and micro- 

 scope, I ascertained something of its organisation, what unheard-of 



