STOWAWAYS ON SHIPS 433 



the world over. Occasionally, however, a stray piece of 

 evidence comes forward to show that ships do actually con- 

 tribute to our fauna by such transportations. There is an 

 American Oat-pipe Coralline, Tubularia crocea, which, widely 

 distributed on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the 

 New World, was unknown in British waters until, in 1897, 

 it was discovered in Plymouth Sound attached to the stern 

 of a large three-masted sailing-ship, the Ballachulish of 

 Ardrossan. There could be no doubt as to the original 

 provenance of these fine colonies of Hydroid Zoophytes, for 

 the Ballachulish had made the voyage direct from Iquique, 

 Peru. The significance of their presence lies in the fact that 

 when they were examined in Plymouth by Mr E. T. Browne, 

 the colonies were fully developed and ripe, and were setting 

 free in the Sound great quantities of their tiny, jellyfish-like 

 young, which, if conditions favoured, would give origin to 

 an alien stock in the marine fauna of the English Channel. 

 How many myriads of similar cases of involuntary trans- 

 portation have gone unrecorded since man first went down 

 to the sea in ships ? 



