no VOYAGE FEOM INDIA TO SIAM AND MALACCA. 



out their blue tentacles ; among them were some of extraordinary 

 size, the plate-shaped body alone measuring- one inch and a half 

 in diameter. This body had fifty-two ring-shaped stripes ; I 

 caught some of them. Some sea snakes also passed our ship and 

 also my swimming triton, but not as often as in the Strait of 

 Malacca. At midday we were at six degrees twenty-three minutes 

 N. Lat., and our captain directed the course of the ship towards 

 the coast of Cambodia. 



13. — We had much calm, intermixed with small rain-showers. 

 The water of the sea, which had been so clear before, grew less 

 transparent and darker. We must have had the current in our 

 favour, as we had advanced a whole degree towards the North. 

 A swallow kept up with the ships ; it was the edible swift, and I 

 observed that the white stripe across the tail is very characteristic 

 in this kind. 



14-15. — During these two days we had alternate calm and 

 rain showers, with some West wind. We were between the 

 seventh and eighth degree of N. Lat., and our captain reckoned to 

 be near the place were the south-western cape of Cambodia pro- 

 jects into the sea. Here it was that the sea was covered with 

 millions of Medusa, specially on the fifteenth. The cause hereof, 

 they said, was that the currents from the Cochin-Chinese and the 

 Cambodian coast meet here. As I touched the lower part of this 

 Medusa it stuck to my finger by means of the numerous sucking 

 tubes which are short and almost flesh-coloured. Besides this 

 there were many kinds of the crystalline slimy Medusa, among 

 them one having the shape of an oblong sack, with five rust- 

 coloured round spots. The English are said to call this Medusa 

 the Sea-Egg\ The spots were of the size of a peppercorn, and the 

 animal was about three inches long and about one and half inch in 

 diameter. I could not obtain any unbroken specimen. A second 

 kind resembled a porpoise. The back is convex, smooth, and con- 

 sisted of a thick hard crystalline slime. The edge consists of a ra- 

 ther thin transparent membrane and has between eighty and ninety 

 milky tube-like stripes, which at the outer end were somewhat swol- 

 len, and at times looked like knots (this however is only momentary, 

 because they again become pointed when the animal stretches them 

 out). There is a second membrane in the disc, separated from the 

 first by a wide bare ring ; this second membrane is also striped 

 with milk-white s'^ripes and is indented at the edge. The largest 



