58 A NATUBALIST IN CELEBES ch. iv 



hardly appreciable. For all practical purposes we may say 

 that the sun rises and sets at six o'clock in the morning and 

 evening. My usual custom was to rise between half-past 

 five and six. My flannel sleeping costume was quite suffi- 

 cient dress for the fashions of the island, so that I could, 

 without any fear of losing my social status, read or write 

 for an hour or two before my bath over a cup of coffee 

 without the trouble of further dressing. I had not been 

 long in the island before I found that reading and writing 

 were not to be indulged in at that early hour ; it was much 

 too precious for other work, for not only are the birds and 

 insects, which disappear as the sun becomes more powerful, 

 particularly visible at that hour, but it is the time of the 

 day above all others when the surface of the sea teems with 

 animal life. I remember well my disappointment when I 

 first got into tropical waters at finding that my surface-net 

 invariably came up almost empty. It was not until I had 

 been at work some time that I made the very simple dis- 

 covery that in the early morning hours every sweep of the 

 net brings up countless pelagic forms of all sizes and de- 

 scriptions. This may be due to the change in the tempera- 

 ture of the water. The temperature of the surface-waters 

 off the reefs in the middle of the day was as high as 80° F.; 

 in the early morning hours it was often below 70° F. It is 

 very probable that when the temperature of the surface 

 rises above 70° F. these forms sink to a cooler zone a little 

 below the surface, and that they could be readily caught 

 in a tow-net sunk to a proper depth at all times of the 

 day. 



Thus, after a time, I used to forsake my books and 

 diaries in the early morning for expeditions after birds and 

 insects, or for excursions in a canoe for surface dredgings. 

 At 8 o'clock A.M. one of the two great treats of the day was 

 in store for me. This was the morning bath. Within a 



