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Travels of a Naturalist in Japan and Manchuria (1870)
Travels of a Naturalist in Japan and Manchuria - 1870 Author:Arthur Adams Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. The Cape of Good Hope—A Four Days' Beetle Hunt—Millar's Point- Whales' Bones —Fish " galore " —Wrecked Violet-Snails — A Stranded Fiddle-fish—Cor... more »morants and Penguins—Burrowiug-Suails —A Vegetable Parachute. Having accomplished the purpose for which we were sent to Eio Janeiro, we left it, on our return, towing the " Dove," our little steam-tender, by two 9-inch hemp hawsers, and after a voyage of six weeks, we reached the Cape of Good Hope. On our arrival the hawsers, which were quite new on starting, were hauled inboard, when they were found covered with barnacles along their whole length. These were nearly all full-grown, and, with the exception of one small white kind of Balanus, were all pedunculated or stalked, belonging to the genera Lepas, Scalpellum and Otion. So numerous were they, that even when the hawsers were comparatively freed from them, they became so FLOATING SPAES. 31 offensive, from the decaying animal matter about them, as to require washing with Sir W. Burnett's solution, and they had to be kept on deck a considerable time before they could be reeled up below. On another occasion we fell in with a floating spar seven hundred miles from the Azores. From the fact of its being covered with barnacles, it was the general impression that it must have been a long time in the water. On a boat being lowered, however, the carpenter examined it, and pronounced it to be a new spar, the lower-mast of some vessel . It was entirely covered with full-grown Lepas ana- tifera; a fact which goes to prove how rapid is the growth of the Lepades, and also how desirable it is, for the sake of humanity, to examine these floating wrecks, even when they seem apparently hoary with age. The fate of many missing vessels might possibly be determined by reading t...« less