Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/109

 the centre of the room was a small jet of water, illuminated by the electric light, and falling into a simple tridone. This shell, produced by the greatest of acephalous molluscs, measured about six yards round the delicately-curved edge. It thus surpassed in size those that were presented to Francis I. by the Republic of Venice, and of which the church of St. Sulpice in Paris has constructed two immense holy-water basins.

Around this vase were classed and ticketed the most precious productions of the sea that had ever gladdened the eyes of a naturalist. You can picture my delight.

The zoophytes presented most curious specimens of the two groups of polypes and echinodermes. In the first group, tubipores, gorgons displayed fan-wise, soft sponges from Syria, &c., and a series of those madrepores, which my master Milne-Edwards has so cleverly classed in sections. In fine, the whole represented a collection complete in individual specimens of the various groups.

The collection of shells was of inestimable value, and time would fail me in attempting to describe them all. Amongst them I well remember the elegant royal hammer-fish of the Indian Ocean, whose regularly-placed white spots showed out upon the red or brown beneath—an imperial spondyde of vivid colouring, bristling with spines, a rare specimen in European museums, and worth, I should say, 20,000 francs; a common specimen of hammer-fish from New Holland, where it is not easy to procure, however; “buccardia” of Senegal, fragile white bivalves, which one may blow away like a soap-bubble; a whole series of “trochi,” some greenish