Each of the gill cases terminated in a two-edged spur,
transparent as glass, and keen as only Nature knows how to make her
weapons of defence.
Presently in obedience to some instinct the shoal left the shallow water
inshore, and we watched it glide among the brown waving seaweed to the
line of dull red, which indicated the outer edge of the coral reef and
saw it no more. This, my piscatorial pastor and master says, was no
doubt a community of striped cat-fish, (PLOTOSUS ANGUILLARIS).
THE BAILER SHELL
Adhering to a rock by a short stumpy stalk, sometimes sealed firmly to a
loose stone, you may find an object in form and structure resembling an
elongated, coreless pineapple, composed of a leathery semi-gelatinous,
semi-transparent substance, dirty yellow in colour. It is the spawn case
or the receptacle of the ova (if that term be allowable), and the cradle
of what is commonly known as the bailer shell (CYMBIUM AETHIOPICUM) the
"Ping-ah" of the blacks, one of the most singular and interesting
features that these reefs have for the sight-seer. In its composition
there may be fifty, more or less cohering, conic sections, each
containing an unborn shell in a distinct and separate stage of
development.
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