BOOK NOTICE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2652, 11 January 1905, Page 80

BOOK NOTICE.

"Creatures of the Sea." By Prank T. Bullen, F.R.C.S. London: Religious Tract Society. (Demy Bvo, cloth, gilt;

7s 6d net.)

There is probably no man better fitted than the author of "The Cruise of the Cachalot" to undertake the task here set forth— that'Sof relating "the life-stories of sea birds, beasts, and fishes." No man living, probably, knows more than he of the lives of seamen and sea creatures generally. A practical sailor, an enthusiastic naturalist, endowed -with keen powers of observation and unusual opportunities of exercising them, his. book is at once a mine of information and a fascinating presentment of a little-known realm of strange creatures,' some of them quite as eccentric as anything that the excited fancy of a Jules Verne or a D. OJ. Wells could imagine. Following in the steps of SetonThompson, Rudyard Kipling, and others, Mr Bullen makes many of the creatures tell their own tales — not, merely to point a moral, as in Mrs Gatty's ever-charming " Parables from Nature," but, like any other autobiographist, to give a faithful record of personal facts and feelings, incidents and adventures. In this way the sperm whale, the shark, the turtle, the albacore, and many others are made to tell their own tales, to show the beauty and the charm of the joyous ocean life, the delights of mere existence, the glory of the sun and of the_ sea, the pleasures of the chase, the battle, the exercise of all natural functions. Again and again the writer speaks of the natural affection of creatures whom we, in our ignorance, had supposed to be deficient in that attribute, dwelling at some length on the monogamous affection of some and the passionate maternal instinct' of others. Like Mr Seton-Thompson, he again and again emphasises the fact that, though Nature is indeed "red in tooth and claw," man alone suffers from that anticipation oi evil, that dread of ihe future, which constitutes the true sting of death. That the wild creatures of the sea are voracious eaters, devouring everything that comes within reach, and in immense quantities, he constantly points out ; but such a death does not seem to him in any way shocking, but rather distinctly preferable to the slow decay of sickness and senility. There are no diseased and worn-out creatures in the sea: directly one is seriously injured or past his prime he is devoured by his mates ; and so the drama of life goes merrily on. As has been said of foxhunting, "the men like it, the horses like it: who is to say that the fox does not like if?" In every chapter and in every detail Mr Bullen endeavours to do justice to his marine friends, and in so doing he confounds' many popular prejudices and explains away many popular errors. He marks the difference between the different kinds of whale, and shows the confusion that has arisen between tne sperm whale, which can devour Eu^e masses of squid, and the right whale, "largest of all living creatures," which subsists on the tiny Crustacea known asj' whale-feed," found in bands "hundreds of feet deep" in the seas which this whale frequents, and which he inhales without an effort into the enormous cavity of his mouth, where the wonderful apparatus afforded by the broad plates of " whalebone " keeps them prisoners until the great tongue, "two tons in weight," forces out the water and allows the heap of tiny creatures to " slide gradually down a pipe l^in in diameter — the gullet of the "right, whale." He has a good deal to say about the shark and the violent and universal horror entertained towards him by all human beings. He admits that the shark is "an eater of human flesh," but adds: "What fish is not? It cannot be too clearly understood that all fish are omnivorous as regards flesh or fish ; nobbing comes amiss to any of them." But he heaps scorn on such. " idiotic stories as those of sharks following a ship at sea because on board there is one sick." And in another place he d-s-clares: " The shark eats man, not because he loves man to eat, but because man, when he falls overboard, is generally easy to s,et." If, however, the man be a good and noisy swimmer no shark will venture near, ' for they are, though tormented with hunger, a most nervous and timid race."' Another much-abused denizen of the ocean which Mr Bullen would fain rehaTnJiiate is the whole race of cuttlefish or squid, including the octopus, which "is a very humble member of this great molluscan family, never growing very lar^e, and entirely indebted for his fame to the splendid but fatally inaccurate .. pen of Victor Hugo in bis 'Toilers of thie Sea.'" It jg the

great squid or decapod which ■attains to such gigantic size as to afford the tons of food required to support the sperm whales and other monsters of the deep. Yet in spite of the comparatively small size of thetrue octopus, Mr Bullen relates an adventure of his own in a little bay in Stewart Island, New Zealand, with one of these creatures, which, though in his case it ended happily, might easily have proved fatal to a younger or weaker person. The writer had been treading sand near the mouth of a small rivulet in order to catch flounders, when suddenly " I trod on something like a blob of jelly. Fearing a sting I mad* to step off, only to feel both my legs gripped in several places by something that clung as if it would eat into the flesh. I stooped and felt a long, whiplike tentacle twisted round my right leg. I tore it off, a feeling of nausea making me quite giddy. But no sooner had I removed one snaky thing than another held me, and another, and another. It is time the water was shallow, only reaching to my hips, but I began to feel as if I must be dragged under, drowned, and devolved by this horrible thing, whatever it was." Fortunately the young sailor possessed presence" of mind to draw his sheath-knife and stab at the body of ihe invisible enemy, "and presently I felt the clutch of the tentacles round my legs relax, I saw the water all stained with something which I then thought to be blood, but now know to be sepia, and I smelt the strong odour of stale musk ; also I ieTk strangely sick and ill, and all a-tremble." The body of the creature was not larger than the narrator's two fists, and the eight tentacles were about 20in in length, yet its attack might easily have proved fatal to a weaker person or one unprovided with the sailor's invaluable and inseparable companion, the sheath-knife. Mr Bullen devotes a long and instructive chapter to a consideration of the sea-serpent and the extraordinary legends concerning this mysterious creature, each of which he demolishes with merciless accuracy, pointing out the absurdity and gross exaggeration of most of the stories, and in many cases offering reasonable solutions for the same. Yet he appears very doubtful of the result of his efforts, declaring that " the subject of sea-serpents is so mixed up with pure superstition, personal bias, human weakness of mind and credulity, that it seems impossible to get rid of the mendacious literature on the subject — stuff written falsely from a diseased and riotous imagination with no other object in view than that of creating a sensation, not seldom with the full knowledge that there is always an immense number of otherwise sane and sensible persons who really believe anything they read in print which is not admittedly fiction." In the chapter on " Deep-sea Chimaeras " we are introduced to some really strange creatures, which, in form and colouring, appear to be mere freaks of Nature, for whose existence man has not been able hitherto to advance any reasonable ' hypothesis. In some the colouring is so gorgeous, not to say gaudy, that it baffles description — or, rather, realisation, — as, for instance, the following : — " The scheme of colour was bright green ; scattered about the body were brilliant crimson spots mostly circular, about half an inch in diameter. From each of these spots there sprouted a tassel of bright blue *upon a, yellow sfcg||js|Hfcput one inch in height. The fins "arid tail were fringed with blue filaments, perpetually fluttering ; over each eye was a yellow horn, with a pendant tassel of * blue. . . . He had a crimson dorsal fin, and a large blue tassel dangling from his nose." Of others the form is so amazing that only the excellent illustrations can afford the slightest idea of these weird monstrosities, like embodied nightmares or the dreams of disease. Here we read of "electric light installations, row upon row, or group upon group of tiny incandescent lamps, glowing and fading at the will of their owner, rendering him invisible at will, or lighting up the surrounding sea so that none of his intended victims may be hidden. These tiny glow-lamps are arranged along the sides and head of the fish in strangely regular rows, or groups, each differing species that possesses this system of selfillumination • having them different." Enough, we think, has already been said and quoted^to show the value and interest of Mr Bullen' s book. As he tells us in his introduction, it has been his effort throughout to present to his reader " more retainable knowledge of the creatures treated of than can be obtained from weighty volumes of dry facts." And in this eSort we think that he has been most eminently successful. No one who begins this volume will put it down unread ; the subject and the style are too fascinating. No one who reads it but will refer to it again and again as a storehouse of facts, just the kind of facts that one likes to know and

to remember. Not the least charm of the book comes from, the 40 full-page illustrations from the pencil of Mr Theo. Carreras — " my artist-coadjutor," as Mr Bullen calls him, — whose work has been a labour of love, he having brought all his artistic knowledge to back up and reproduce the writer's recollections of the attitudes of the various creatures, with a result most gratifying, alike to the author and the reader. Everywhere, in illustration as in letterpress, the effort is made to give first-hand glimpses into that intimate life of the sea. which is so little known, and accounts of which may be sought in vain in most natural histories, but which constitute, here as elsewhere, the true charm of all ■historical narration.