Notes from a journal of research into the natural history of the countries visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Samarang [from vol. II of Narrative of the voyage of H.M.S. Samarang, by Sir E. Belcher issued with new t.p.] under the command of Captain Sir Edward Belcher.

Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes from a journal of research into the natural history of the countries visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Samarang [from vol. II of Narrative of the voyage of H.M.S. Samarang, by Sir E. Belcher issued with new t.p.] under the command of Captain Sir Edward Belcher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    249/324 page 465
    which is not correct. The mantle of this species is of a dull, dirty pinkish white, covered with large irregular shaped, reddish-brown blotches, distributed in no regular order ; the siphon is marbled with the same colour, but of a lighter shade; the tentacles are dull pinkish-white. Living I]hurn(B are very common in the China sea. They generally live in a muddy botton, and in about fourteen fathoms of water. The Chinese fishermen along the coast frequently bring them up in their nets, together with Boripjje, JDromia, and other Crustaceans; and I have seen them carefully set apart in the stern of their craft, as if for the purpose of being eaten. Among the islands of the Korean Arehipelago, the coral-beds are very splendid, and appear, as you look down upon them, through the clear, transparent, water, to form beautiful flower-gardens of marine plants. The polypi which protrude their hydra-forms, are coloured green, blue, violet, and yellow, which gives the corals a very different appearance to the dry, calcareous masses seen in museums, and calls to mind the exclamation of St. Pierre: “Nos livres sur la nature iden sont que le roman, et nos cabinets que le tombeau.’’ Indeed few sights of nature can exceed, in beauty and interest, these submarine parterres, where, amid the protean forms of the branched corals, huge madrepores, brain-shaped, flat, or headed like gigantic mushrooms, are interspersed with sponges of the deepest red, and huge asterias of the richest blue. But as Spencer very properly observes, ‘‘Much more eatli to tell the stars on hy, Albe they endless seeme in estimation, Than to reeount the seas posterity : So fertile be the floods in generation, So huge their numbers, and so numberless their nation.” VOL. II. 2 H
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3