ECHINODERMATA. 
301 
^gs, the pekoul, or a hundred and twenty-five pounds. He estimated 
cargo to be worth about a hundred and twenty pounds, the 
fisliing p a( j 0CCU pi et l h e an d his crew three months. From the earliest 
fifties this commerce has belonged exclusively to the Malay fishermen, 
a,lf l it will always be difficult for Europeans to compete with them. 
Malay vessels are equipped on the most economical principle, and 
men are wanting neither in sobriety, intelligence, or activity. 
11 It was nearly four o’clock when the Malays finished their operations, 
less than half an hour they had embarked their cargo ; the tents 
^ er e struck, and, together with the boilers, carried back to the boats, 
dbich were already preparing to set sail. At eight o’clock in the 
filing they hoisted sail and left the bay.” 
Some idea may be formed of the extent and importance of the 
®°lothuria fishing by the number of ships which it attracts in this 
b ar t of the East. Captain King assures us that two hundred vessels 
dually leave Madagascar to fish for the sea slur/, as it is sometimes 
Ca Hed. Captain Flinders, being on the coast of Australia, learnt that 
a fleet of sixty vessels, having a hundred men on board, had left 
^■flagascar two months previously in the same pursuit. 
.Among the Holothurias, one particular genus, the Synapta, is 
distinguished from others of the family by the absence of the am- 
^flacral feet, and by the fact of its uniting both sexes in one indi- 
vidual. This remarkable Echinoderm, Synapta duvernea, is repro- 
ved iu Pl. XI. M. Qnatrefages, who discovered it in the Channel, 
§|^es the following description of it in his great work, “ Le Souvenirs 
d ll u Natural iste.” “Imagine,” he says, “a cylinder of rose-coloured 
c tystal as much as eighteen inches long and more ihan an inch in 
dimeter, traversed in all its length by five narrow ribbons of white 
silk. 
Of 
— , O «/ 
and its head surmounted by a living flower, whose twelve tentacles 
)f Purest white fall behind in a graceful curve. In the centre of these 
lfis ues, which rival in their delicacy the most refined products of 
loom, imagine an intestine of the thinnest gauze gorged from one 
V to the other with coarse grains of granite ; the rugged points and 
marp edge of which are perfectly perceptible to the naked eye. 
Ic But what most struck me at first in this animal was, that it seemed 
derally to have no other nourishment than the coarse sand by which 
lt Was surrounded. And then when, armed with scalpel and micro- 
Sc °pe, I ascertained something of its organisation, what unheard-of 
