530 



NA TURE 



{Feb. 25, 1875 



summer, when a cable, designed for the Company by Sir 

 William Thomson and Prof. Fleeming Jenkin, and 

 manufactured by Messrs. Hooper, was laid by the large 

 new telegraph ship Hooper between Park and Cayenne 

 on the coast of South America. 



I. Aspects of the Forests— Unconscious Action of the 

 Sensori7iii!.— 0n& of the first things which strikes a per- 

 son at anchor in the Park River is the increased clear- 

 ness with which he can distinguish the details of the 

 distant forest on the river's banks after he has repeatedly, 

 but it may be unconsciously, looked at it. At first the forest 

 presents the appearance of a vague dark-green wall 

 uprising from the brimming yellow flood of the river, 

 but by and by the eye clearly traces boughs, shapes, and 

 even differences of tint in the foliage, which before had 

 entirely escaped its observation. It seems, indeed, as if 

 it were true sensitively as well as intellectually, of the eye 

 as well as of the imagination, that " the oftener we looked 

 at things the more we saw in them." It seems as if, 

 within certain limits, the image of an object became 

 more distinct in our consciousness the oftener it im- 

 pressed itself on the retina, or that our perception became, 

 unconsciously to us, more acute the oftener it was exer- 

 cised upon the same object. This appears to be true 

 also of the other senses ; for example, a chemist has to 

 smell or taste some time before he can discriminate the 

 ingredients of a mixture, and the peculiar cries of the 

 street vendor in time become intelligible to us without 

 any apparent effort on our part. 



Within the forests the absence of grass is at once 

 noticeable. The only plant, indeed, resembling grass, is 

 an orchid which grows as if it had been merely tossed up 

 into the trees. It is very like that sharp-edged sword- 

 bladed grass so troublesome to the farmer and difficult to 

 eradicate from his field. The absence of grass may be 

 attributed to the great evaporation and non-retentiveness 

 of the soil, or to the deep shade of the thick underwood. 



In the vicinity of Park I noticed two trees of different 

 species so entirely locked together as to have one common 

 trunk for seventy or eighty feet of altitude. Near Lake 

 George, in North America, there is, I believe, a similar 

 phencmenon, of which the guide, who points it out, 

 wisely remarks, " Whom God hath joined, let no man put 

 asunder." 



2. Thunderstorms. — Another thing which cannot fail 

 to " strike a stranger" is the prevalence of lightning at 

 Park. There is a display usually every afternoon. The 

 locality seems to lie between that city and the mouth of 

 the river. Thunder is rarely audible. The flashes are large 

 and of a flame-colour, and proceed out of widespreading 

 dark clouds. It was my good fortune to witness a rain 

 and thunder storm on a large scale there. At every flash 

 a bluish glare suddenly illumined the broad river even to 

 the opposite shore, the flooded streets, the piles of build- 

 ings, and the shipping so distinctly that each rope and 

 spar might have been numbered. The flashes succeeded 

 each other with marvellous rapidity, but were not in every 

 case accompanied by audible thunder. 



3. Flying Fish, "Portuguese men-of-'war'' a.ndiSomtoih&r 

 floaters, were seen most frequently in the morning. The 

 Portuguese man-of-war is then very difficult to distinguish 

 amidst the general unrest of the slate-coloured waves. 

 He is usually found solitary, or with a single companion, 

 in the fleet to which he belongs. I was surprised to find 

 that the larger ones were, however, frequently accom- 

 panied by a school of little fishes like sardines, which 

 twinkled around them in the water like so many attendant 

 sprites. Their object in being there was doubtless to get 

 food, but how this is done it is difficult to know. 



The flying-fish were sometimes extremely numerous. 

 They turned both horizontal and upward vertical curves 

 in the air during their short flight, which resembles that 

 of a mud-lark. It seemed to me that they vibrated their 

 wings rapidly on first starting, so as to assist them to gain 

 a sufficient height, after which they simply skimmed till 

 they touched water again and gave themselves a fresh 

 impulse. Their wing-power is certainly, as yet, unable to 

 sustain flight, although it is capable of assisting and 

 diverting it. 



4. A Barracouta.—\x\. the River Park estuary a fine 

 lusty Barracouta leaped from the water into the ship, a 

 height of ten or twelve feet, nearly striking our chief 

 engineer in the face. He caught it. The back was 

 beautifully chased with dark-green, blue, and gold ; the 

 sides and belly with paler green, blue, and gold ; and 

 three rows of metallic-looking spots were ranged along 

 the sides like flakes of citrate of iron and quinine. It 

 had a single row of sharp triangular teeth in each jaw. 



5. Phosphorescence. — This phenomenon was sometimes 

 very beautiful. It owes its appearance, perhaps, not so 

 much to conditions of atmosphere, &c.. as to prevalence 

 of the creatures which give rise to it. ^^'e remarked the 

 boundaries of a thick colony of them as clearly defined 

 amongst the surrounding population as land is from 

 sea on a map. The usual appearance of this phospho- 

 rescence and of the flight of flying-fish are accurately 

 described by the Rev. Canon Kingsley in " At Last." 



6. St. Rogue Current. — We found the speed of this 

 current to be as much as four knots an hour sometimes, 

 instead of two and two-and-a-half as marked on the 

 charts. In lat. 3" 42' N., long. 48° 15' W., we found it 

 skirting the edge of the fringing reef, and so well defined 

 from the rest of the ocean, that in crossinGf it the ship 

 was half in current water and half in ocean, and the 

 agitation at the line of demarcation could be seen for 

 miles. At the surface we found its temperature to be 

 82° F., and at the bottom, 150 fathoms deep, we found 

 the temperature only 59° F. 



7. Live Specimens. — Off the mouth of the Amazon we 

 had occasion to pick up some cable which had been sub- 

 merged a little over a month. In the vicinity of the 

 lightship, among the sandy shoals of the River Park 

 estuary, the cable was completely encrusted with tiny 

 barnacles. Beyond this, and further out at sea, it came 

 up covered with submarine vegetation, crabs, and shells 

 of curious description. Among the latter were a pink, 

 semi-transparent Leda, with ony.K-Uke streaks of white ; 

 aad a nuiimulite. Thj ss.iwieds were in great variety 



