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"Well, for your sakes, I am rather glad you did not," said the boatswain. "In a little time, our friends, who seemed bound to a distance, began to think that our room would be pleasanter than our company. They had a strange cargo on board, bales of that nasty-looking stuff, the sea-slug, and birds' nests, and mother-of-pearl shell, and I do not know how many other odd things.
DOWN, BROMLEY, KENT, June 9, 1845 I must take this opportunity of returning my sincere thanks to Mr. Bynoe, the surgeon of the Beagle, for his very kind attention to me when I was ill at Valparaiso. Porto Praya Ribeira Grande Atmospheric Dust with Infusoria Habits of a Sea-slug and Cuttle-fish St.
The missionaries cited this as a parable of Christianity, which would save from damnation the convert no matter how fungusy he was with sin. In tribal wars the enemy laid a sea-slug at the heart of the maori, and, its foe unseen, the tree perished from the corruption of the hideous trepang.
In the second place on the Barrier Reef is found the 'Holothuria', from which the 'beche-de-mer' is prepared. It is a kind of sea-slug, averaging from one to over two feet in length, and four to ten inches in girth. In appearance, these sea-cucumbers are more repulsive, looking like flabby black or green sausages, and squirting out a stream of salt water when pressed.
This done the little vessel proceeds to the edge of the reef, and begins work in earnest. The sea-slug is found buried amidst the triturated sand, worn away by the constant play of the waves, and only the experienced and keen-eyed Kanakas can detect its whereabouts, by the fitful waving of the long feathery tentacles surrounding the mouth of the fish, which immerses its body in the sand.
During our stay, I observed the habits of some marine animals. A large Aplysia is very common. This sea-slug is about five inches long; and is of a dirty yellowish colour veined with purple. On each side of the lower surface, or foot, there is a broad membrane, which appears sometimes to act as a ventilator, in causing a current of water to flow over the dorsal branchiae or lungs.
The Cucumaria is a low radiate animal the sea-slug a far higher mollusc; and every organ within him is formed on a different type; as indeed are those seemingly identical gills, if you come to examine them under the microscope, having to oxygenate fluids of a very different and more complicated kind; and, moreover, the Cucumaria's gills were put round his mouth, the Doris's feathers round the other extremity; that grey Eolis's, again, are simple clubs, scattered over his whole back, and in each of his nudibranch congeners these same gills take some new and fantastic form; in Melibaea those clubs are covered with warts; in Scyllaea, with tufted bouquets; in the beautiful Antiopa they are transparent bags; and in many other English species they take every conceivable form of leaf, tree, flower, and branch, bedecked with every colour of the rainbow, as you may see them depicted in Messrs.
It is also with the object of increasing their bodily powers that these epicures consume the uninviting sea-slug or bêche-de-mer, and dried sharks'-fins and cuttle fish.
Many marine animals seem to have this power of stinging: besides the Portuguese man-of-war, many jelly-fish, and the Aplysia or sea-slug of the Cape de Verd Islands, it is stated in the "Voyage of the Astrolabe" that an Actinia or sea-anemone, as well as a flexible coralline allied to Sertularia, both possess this means of offence or defence.
A more beautiful example of a phosphorescent mollusk is presented by a sea-slug called Phyllirhoë bucephala. This is a creature of from one and a half to two inches in length, without a shell in the adult stage, and without even gills. It breathes only by the general surface of the body.
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