VOYAGE FROM INDIA TO SIAM AND MALACCA 117 



As I cannot describe everything as minutely as I ought to, 

 I will note down whatever I see, in order to tempt others to 

 closer investigation. I shall give special attention to the molluscs.* 



I caught to-day some Medusa, of f of an inch in diameter. 

 Their disc resembled a convex button and v/as about |- of an inch 

 thick, quite smooth and as transparent as a crystal. The outer 

 edge projected a little and had many hairlike threads of a milk- 

 white colour standing apart one from the other, they had not the 

 length of the diameter of the body. Behind these there was a 

 second ring-shaped slightly projecting membrane, having also fine 

 threads which were however shorter, a little thicker, but very thin 

 at their base ; they were closely covered with tiny dots, giving 

 these threads a clublike appearance, the disc itself between these 

 threads was naked and quite flat. 



21. — There were again many of the new kind of molluscs 

 and also some of those with the blue gut. I further observed, 

 that when freshly taken out of the sea, they had six projecting- 

 corners. At both ends they were obtuse, as if cut off; a little thicker 

 in the middle and hardly longer than one inch and ^ of an inch 

 in diameter, at the ends only ^ of an inch in diameter. If one 

 seized it at one of these ends and shook it a little, the inner parts 

 dropped out as if from a sheath; these parts had a thin gelatinous 

 skin, while the outer parts were covered with a thick hard skin. 

 There was only life in the inner parts, and when I threw them 

 back into the water, they continued to live as before, but the blue 

 gut lengthened to three times its usual size, loosened itself from 

 the slimy skin with a jerky movement peculiar to these animals, 

 and I suppose, it forms the young animals, because after it had 

 lengthened in this way it had distinctly visible little spots near 

 the stomach, and the blue colour is changed into a green trans- 

 parent one. 



A very large snake passed the ship, and a very pretty small 

 one as well ; its belly was chestnut brown and the head and back 

 pitch black ; it vv^as one and a half feet in length. 



A chain of a foot and a half long, formed by the kind of 

 animals I described yesterday, passed the ship in the afternoon. 



* In these days of big, rapidly travelling steamers, a naturalist has no 

 sucli cliance of observing the Jelly fish wliich Koenig took such delight in, 

 and probably many of these animals he here describes have not been met 

 with since. ( Ed. ) 



