Examining the specimens procured, it was found that they resembled lampreys in shape, olive green in colour, with pale lemon-coloured streaks and marks.  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.  At the base, the shells are, perhaps, just emerging each from its special compartment, as a young bee emerges from its cell—­each a thin frail shell, about half an inch long, white with pale yellow and light brown markings.  In time, should it survive all the accidents and assaults to which on entering the world it is beset, the tiny shell will develop into an expansively-mouthed vessel.  The next succeeding row will be in a less matured state, and so the development diminishes towards the apex.  Some of the compartments are occupied by shells transparent, colourless and fragile in the extreme, some by shells having merely the rudiment of form, until at the apex the cells contain but a drop or so of sparkling, quivering jelly.

The bailer shell alive is like an egg, in the fact that it is full of meat.  Many marine shells have surprisingly diminutive fleshy occupants, however great their tenacity and strength.  The animal inhabiting a large-sized bailer weighs several pounds, the flesh being tough, leathery and of unwholesome appearance.  When it has decayed, the shell being thin, the cavity is phenomenally capacious.  Large specimens contain a couple of gallons of water, and as the shape is most convenient, and there is neither rust nor moth to corrupt, their aptitude as effective and durable bailers for boats is apparent.  Some name them the boxer shell, tracing resemblance to a boxing-glove, others the “boat,” and again the melon shell.  Blacks use them for a variety of purposes—­bailers, buckets, saucepans, drinking vessels, baskets, and even wardrobes.  They represent, perhaps, the only utensil in which a black can boil food, and it is an astonishing though not edifying spectacle when the fat-layered intestine of a turtle, sodden in salt water just brought to a boil in a bailer shell, is eagerly devoured by hungry blacks.