72 VOYAGE FROM INDIA TO SIAM AND MALACCA. 



Opportunity of counting- their eight stretched-out arms distinctly ; 

 they are about two inches long, and between two or three lines 

 thick and are a little compressed, at both edges and at the inner 

 side they were covered with projecting warts ; the colour was 

 grey, less transparent than the rest of the body. Many of these 

 molluscs were here hardly as thick as a thumb and about three 

 feet long ; those which I had seen before were much larger. 

 Among the many fleshy kinds of corals there were some which 

 were shell-like and cupular. Their projecting edge was curly, with 

 many folds and bends ; there were many threadlike arms at the 

 edges which could be stretched out as far as an inch, and as 

 the flood rose they made wave-like movements. The other part 

 of the body was brown on the concave side and red on the out- 

 ward side. At first I deemed this fleshy growth to be a kind of 

 coral, but as soon as I touched it the arms were drawn in, and 

 when I wanted to pull it out by force it crept deep into the 

 ground, spirting some water from its centre. I dug more than 

 half a foot into the sand to find the root, but I had not yet dug 

 deep enough, It was without doubt an Actinia, but a very large 

 kind, the diameter of some being half a foot, not counting their 

 arms. On some old coral remains polypus had fastened, they were 

 all threadlike, close together, more than an inch long and coffee- 

 brown ; they also were soft and fleshy. It was impossible to 

 count the number of their arms in the water, they could only be 

 distinguished on account of their white ends; as soon as they 

 were taken out of the water they formed a tang'led mass. 



The peculiar thing was that I did not find a single porcelain 

 shell nor an Ostrea isognomum in any of these islands. 



19. — I went with my captain again to the island Pullu Jambu. 

 He had been ill and wanted to recreate himself. We had many 

 armed people with us, and so I dared to penetrate deeper into 

 the wood of this island, which in reality is only a peninsula. 

 We wanted to go across the mountains, and after we had worked 

 our way through the bamboo and rottan jungle, we came into 

 a forest, which had very high trees and only little undergrowth. 

 I found a shrub, about three or four feet high; male blossoms 

 grew directly on the stem or the branches in horizontal position 

 and they had sometimes not the slightest prominence on which 

 they grew ; ihey were funnel-shaped, the tubes were very thin 

 and about three quarters of an inch long. The limbs spread and 



