Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1892-03-31
SEA SHELLS.
Pretty ard Odd Things Found Under the
Water.

The sea cucumber is found In shallow
waters, on coral reefs, or in those love-
ly, calm lagoons, that shine like look
ing-glasses just inside the breakers
sometimes exposed on the bare rocks,
sometimes half buried in the coral
sand, its tentacles floating on the sur
face of the water. The natives often
capture the larger kinds by spearing
them on the rocks; but the usual mode
of taking them is by diving, where the
water is four or five fathoms deep, and
gathering them by hand, as the pearl
oyster is taken. A good diver will
bring up dozen at time
To prepare them for market they are
split down one side, boiled and pressed
fat with stones; then, stretched on
bamboo slips, they are dried in the
sun and afterward smoked; and so
they are shipped aboard junks and
sent to China to tickle the whim-
steal palates of dainty projects and
epicurean mandarins. And you may
imagine how fond of trepang
soup those luxurient fellows are when
you are told that although the finest
sea cucumbers sell in Fuhchow and
Nanchang for about dollar and
half pound, fleets of from sixty to
hundred proas, carrying from fifteen
hundred to two thousand men, leave
Macassar in company to gather them.
OF all the curious and beautiful forms
of animal life that float or sail or row
on the surface of the Indian ocean, GOV.
ering the sea for miles in all directions,
the most curious and beautiful are the
violet janthine, the Portuguese man-of
war, the sallee-man and the glass.
shells.
The janthine is snail with shell
which, in form and size, resembles the
| little-house that the common garden
snail carries on its back; but its color is
pearly-white above and violet beneath;
| 1t is provided with curious oblong
"foat," about an inch in length, COM
posed of delicate white membrane, in
fiated and puclered on the surface
into small bladders or bubbles, and
supported by this the Janthine floats
on the convex side Of its she'll. Three
or four drops of blue liquid are al.
ways found in its body; and some nat.
uralists have imagined that the use OF
this is to conceal the pretty little crea-
ture, when danger threatens it, by i'm.
parting to the water around it color
like it's own. But this can hardly be
so, since the whole quantity found in
even the largest Janthine is barely
enough to stain half pint of water. In
the spawning season the eggs of this sea
snail are hung by pearly threads under
the float; yet these tiny bladders are
found in great numbers, separate
from the mother, but with the eggs
attached, so the janthine must have the
power of casting off its float, and form.
ing new one leaving it's eggs, and
probably its young also, to be warmed
and Graded on the pillows, in the heat
and light OF the sun.
Then there are those exquisitely love
ly and fragile ''glass-shells," little liv.
ing rowboats, the bustling shallops Of
invisible sea fairies, like the musseI
shell the poet Drake describes in hi;
charming story of THE Culprit Fay
She was as lovely pleasure boat
AS ever fairy had padded in;
For she glowed with purple paint without,
And shone with silvery pearl within.
A sculler's notch on the stern he made;
An oar he shaped of the bootle- blade;
Then sprung to his seat with lightsome leap
And launched afar on the calm, blue deep.
The two prettiest of these are tho
hyalea and the cleodora Both have
CLASSY, colorless shells, extremely
delicate and brittle, with pair Of fins
or wings, which the elfin uses as oars
In the dark the cleodora is vividly
luminous its tiny glass lantern shining
and bobbing on the top of wave, lik,
fairy-foating beacon for the Portu
guese men-of- war and the sallee-men,
and its own consorts in the glass-shel
fleet, to steer by.-N Y. Advertiser.