Sept. 2i, 1SS2] 



NATURE 



5C3 



amassed at Belligam materials for the study of a life- 

 time, and even obtained some consolation from finding 

 confirmation of the fact which has recently been strikingly 

 demonstrated by the Challenger expedition, namely, that 

 life does not exist in anything like the same diversity of 

 form in different oceans as on different continents ; and 

 that in essential features the marine fauna of one tropical 

 coast differs very little from that of another. The account 

 which Prof. Haeckel gives at some length of the daily 

 routine of his life in Belligam is interesting. The Pro- 

 fessor begins by congratulating himself on this accident 

 of position as affording him twelve clear working hours 

 in the day. 



" I rose," he says, "regularly before the sun, and had 

 enjoyed my first morning bath by the time he showed 

 himself from behind the palm-woods of Cape Mirissa, 

 exactly opposite my Rest-House. As I stepped on to the 

 verandah to enjoy the sudden awakening of the glorious 

 day, I was sure of finding Ganymede with an open cocoa- 

 nut of sweet, cool milk, than which there could be no 

 more refreshing morning drink. William, in the mean- 

 time, was shaking my clothes free from the millipeds, 

 scorpions, and other insects, which had crawled into their 

 folds during the night. Then came Socrates and served 

 me with tea, accompanied by a bunch of banana fruit 

 and the maize bread of the country. My usual beverage, 

 coffee, is, strange to say, so bad in Ceylon as to be un- 

 drinkable, principally because the extreme moisture of 

 the climate prevents the berry from drying properly. 



"At seven o'clock my boatmen appeared to carry down 

 my nets and glasses for the daily canoe expedition. This 

 lasted from two to three hours, and on my return I busied 

 myself in disposing my captures in glasses of different 

 sizes, and saving such as could be saved among the few 

 survivors. The more important specimens were micro- 

 scoped and drawn at once. Then I had my second bath, 

 and at eleven o'clock appeared my so-called ' breakfast,' 

 consisting chiefly of curry and rice. The rice was simply 

 boiled, but in the preparation of the curry my old cook, 

 Babua, exerted all the ingenuity with which nature had 

 endowed his diminutive brain to present me with a fresh 

 combination every day. Sometimes the curry was 'sweet,' 

 sometimes 'hot ; ' sometimes it appeared as an undefin- 

 able mixtum composiium of vegetables, sometimes as a 

 preparation of the flesh of various animals. Babua 

 seemed to divine that as a zoologist I was interested in 

 every class of animal life, and that he could not do better 

 than turn my curry into a sort of daily zoological problem. 

 ... He was apparently a staunch upholder of the theory 

 of the near relationship of birds and reptiles, and held it 

 to be immaterial what particular species of Saurian were 

 prepared for the table. 



" Fortunately for my European prejudices, I only became 

 acquainted by degrees with the zoological variety of my 

 daily dish of curry; usually not until I had swallowed a 

 considerable portion of it in silent resignation. . . . My 

 great resource as an article of diet was the fruit which 

 abounded at every meal and made up for all that I suffered 

 from Babua's curries. Next to the bananas of every 

 variety, of which I consumed several at every meal, my 

 standing dessert consisted of mangoes [Mangifera indica), 

 egg-shaped green fruit, from three to six' inches long ; 

 their cream-like golden pulp has a faint but distinct aroma 

 cf turpentine. The fruit of the passion-flower [passiflora) 

 was very pleasant to my taste, reminding me of the 

 gooseberry. I was less pleased with the renowned custard- 

 apple, the scaly fruit of the Annona squamosa, and with 

 the Indian almond, the hard nut of the Terminalia 

 catappa. There are singularly few apples and oranges in 

 Ceylon ; the latter remain green, and are sour and not 

 juicy ; but the want of cultivation is doubtless chiefly 

 answerable for the inferiority of this and other fruits ; the 

 Singhalese are far too easy-going to make anv progress in 

 horticulture. Refreshed with my modest repast, I em- 



ployed the hot hours of mid-day — from twelve to four 

 o'clock— in anatomical or microscopic work, in making 

 observations and drawings, and in the preservation and 

 storing of my collected objects. The evening hours, from 

 four to six o'clock, were generally occupied with some 

 lovely country excursion ; sometimes I made a water- 

 colour sketch, sometimes I sought to perpetuate one of 

 the beautiful views in photography. Now and then I 

 shot apes and birds in the woods, or collected insects and 

 snails, or hunted among the coral reefs on the shore, 

 adding many curious objects to my collection. Richly 

 laden, I return to the Rest House an hour or less before 

 sunset, and worked for another hour at the preservation 

 and arrangement of my specimens. At eight o'clock, my 

 second chief meal, or dinner, was served. The piece de 

 resistance at this was again the inevitable curry and rice, 

 followed sometimes by a fish or a crab, which I enjoyed 

 immensely, and then by some dish composed of eggs or 

 meal, and finishing again with delicious fruit. . . . The 

 important question of ' what to drink,' seemed likely at 

 first to prove a difficult one. The ordinary' drinking 

 water of the lowlands of Ceylon is considered very bad 

 and unwholesome, the highlands, on the contrary, being 

 rich in springs of the purest and freshest water. The 

 great rains which fall daily on the island bring down a 

 mass of mineral and vegetable deposit into the rivers 

 and the stagnant water of the lagoons is not unfre- 

 quently in communication with them. It is not cus- 

 tomary to drink the water unless boiled or made into 

 tea, or with the addition of claret or whisky. My 

 friend Scott had given me an abundant supply of the 

 last-named beverage, but on the whole, I found no drink 

 so pleasant and refreshing as well as wholesome, as the 

 fresh milk of the cocoa-nut. 



" My frugal dinner at an end, I usually took a solitary 

 walk on the shore, or delighted my eyes with the sight of 

 the illumination of the palm woods by myriads ^of fire- 

 flies and glow-worms. Then I made a few entries in my 

 note-book, or tried to read by the light of a cocoa-nut oil 

 lamp. But I was generally quite tired enough to go to 

 bed soon after nine o'clock, after another careful shaking 

 of the clothes for the expulsion of scorpions and 

 millipeds. 



" The great black scorpion (nearly a foot long) is so 

 common in Ceylon that I once collected half a dozen in 

 the course of an hour. Snakes exist also in great num- 

 bers. Slender green tree-snakes hang from almost every 

 bough, and at night the great rat-snake (Coryphodon 

 Blumenbaehii) hunts rats and mice over the roofs of the 

 huts. Although they are harmless and their bite not 

 poisonous, it is by no means a pleasant surprise when 

 one of these rat-snakes, five feet long, suddenly drops 

 through a hole in the roof into one's room, occasionally 

 alighting on the bed. 



" On the whole, however, my nights in Belligam were 

 but little disturbed by animal intruders, although I was 

 often kept awake by the howling of jackals and the un- 

 canny cry of the Devil-bird (a kind of owl, Syrnium 

 Indrani) and other night-birds. The bell-like cry of the 

 pretty little tree-frogs which make their dwelling in the 

 cups of large flowers, acted rather as a slumber song. 

 But I was far oftener kept awake by the whirl of my own 

 thoughts, by the recollection of the many events of the 

 past day, and the anticipation of that which was to come. 

 A brilliant succession of lovely scenes, of interesting 

 observations and varied experiences mingled in my brain 

 with plans of fresh enterprise and new discoveries for 

 the morrow." 



A SOLAR PRINTING PRESS 



IT was mentioned in a recent number of this journal 

 that a printing press worked by solar heat had been 

 exhibited in the Tuileries Garden in Paris on the occa- 

 sion of a file. We are enabled to give some particulars 



