ON A NORWEGIAN FIORD u 



to cut it and lose some 300 fathoms of rope. At last 

 the efforts of four men at the oars set it free, and we 

 wound it in. As the dredge came up we found en- 

 tangled in the rope an enormous tree-like growth, as 

 thick as a man's arm, seven feet long, and spreading 

 out into branches, the whole of a pale vermilion colour 

 (like pink lacquer) — a magnificent sight ! It was a 

 branch of the great tree-coral of these waters — the Para- 

 gorgia — and we preserved many pieces of it in alcohol 

 and dried the rest. But the gorgeous colour could not 

 be retained. 



One day the green worm, Hamingia (named after a 

 Norwegian hero — Haming) was dredged by us at the 

 mouth of Lervik Harbour, in 40 fathoms. A some- 

 what similar worm lives in holes in the limestone rocks 

 of the Mediterranean, and is named Bonellia (after the 

 Italian naturalist, Bonelli). All the specimens of this 

 Mediterranean worm, which is as large as a big walnut, 

 and has a trunk, or proboscis, a foot long, were found to 

 be females. The male was unknown until my friend the 

 late Alexander Kowalewsky, the most remarkable of 

 Russian zoologists, discovered that it is a tiny threadlike 

 green creature, no bigger than the letter " i " on this 

 page. Three or four are found crawling about on the 

 body of the large female. I found the same diminutive 

 kind of male crawling on my Norwegian Hamingia, at 

 Lervik, and published a drawing and description of 

 him. I was also able to show that, unlike Bonellia, the 

 Norwegian worm has red blood-corpuscles, like those of 

 a frog, and impregnated with haemoglobin, the same 

 oxygen-carrying substance which colours our own blood- 

 corpuscles. The identity of the worm's haemoglobin 

 with that in our own blood was proved by its causing 

 two dark bands of absorption in the solar spectrum 



