Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/398

394 passed the winter in Bermuda, and upon his return inquired of me if I did not think it would be a good place for a marine laboratory. The more I inquired into the condition of living in the islands, and the marine organisms in the sea about the islands, the more I became convinced of the practicability of the place for a biological laboratory.

At the risk of saying much that is already familiar to many of you, I will give an account of some of the things which seem to me of interest in this connection.

From fifty to sixty hours' steaming brings one from New York to Bermuda. It is worthy of note that the distance of the islands from New York or Boston is only about two thirds that of the Dry Tortugas or the Bahamas. The climate and the conditions of life in the Bermudas are safe and agreeable at all seasons of the year. Though the humidity is considerable, the temperature in summer rises to only 85° or 86° Fahrenheit; in winter it seldom gets below about 50°, and never to the freezing point. To the zoologist familiar with the animals of our north Atlantic coast and the water they live in, the waters that wash the shores of these islands and the brilliantly colored animals that inhabit them are a source of surprise and delight.

Leaving New York a little before noon on Saturday, the islands are usually sighted about mid-day on Monday, and landing is made in Hamilton a few hours later. If one has pictured to himself low-lying coral islands fringed with palm trees, he will be disappointed, and will be surprised to find that the land rises in many places to a considerable height—even to two hundred and fifty feet or more—and on approaching nearer to see, instead of palms, the dark green of the cedars that cover many of the hills. In passing from the deep waters of the Atlantic to the shallower depths near land, the dark blue of the ocean is replaced by livelier tints, in which greens predominate, and when the conditions of sun and sky are favorable, the variety of colors exhibited is truly wonderful. Even the far-famed Bay of Naples does not afford a more brilliant display of colors than is sometimes seen in the waters around the Bermudas.

In contrast with these fascinating, kaleidoscopic effects of the sea, the land presents either the dull gray appearance so common on the granite shores of New England, or the dark green of the cedars, which also reproduce the effect of the New England evergreens. If one could ignore the colors of the sea, he might easily imagine, as he steams along the northern shores of the Bermudas, that he was skirting some part of the Maine coast. One thing, however, would impress him as strange—the brilliant white specks and patches which here and there dot the hillsides or are clustered into larger or smaller groups—the limestone dwellings of the Bermudians. These with their white roofs, brilliant in the sunlight, are in marked contrast to anything seen on