Humours of the Deep.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 17, 26 April 1911, Page 57

Humours of the Deep.

SEA MONSTERS, FUNNY AND USEFUL. MOUTHFUL OF MILLIONS. Highly amusing and of absorbing interest. was an address delivered to children recently by Mr Frank Bullen, under the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society, on “Deep Sea People at Home,” at the Imperial Institute, says the “Daily News.” By ‘"deep sea people,” he explained, he did not mean seamen. “No man,” he added, “is ever at home upon the sea, and sometimes it does not forget to let us know that we are aliens.” (Laughter.) Describing the jelly fish as being the lowest form of life, Mr Bullen said it multiplied by dividing itself, and lived on fish far higher in the scale of life than itself. Yet, exposed to tho sun, it would melt away in a few minutes. There were, he said a little later, no vegetarians at sea—fish lived to eat and to be eaten. It was an ideal state, where there was no need for old age pensions. (Laughter). Jelly fishes were practically at the basis of all life. Mr Bullen caused a ripple of laughter by his reference to the cuttie fish as the fish with only one meal a day, but that lasting twenty-four hours. These creatures, ranging in length from a few inches to 70 feet, provided food for practically all the rest of the fishes in the sea except one. People might write about the antediluvian monsters, but they were, to use a colloquialism, “not in it” compared with the sperm whale, which weighed as much as 250 tons. Then there was another whale which could easily swallow half-a-dozen recalitrant Jonahs at once. (Laughter.) From the head of one of these monsters in the Behring Sea, enough whalebone (1J tons) had been taken to pay the whole cost of the voyage. Yet this monster was helpless, and only had to be chased long enough for it to die like an old man who had run to catch a train after a heavy meal. Some whales, although huge in size, had very small “swallows,” and lived by sucking tiny creatures into their mouths—four million of these went to make not a mouthful, but one satisfying swallow. The codfish multiplied so rapidly that if no toll was taken of them in two years the Mauretania would be unable to cross the Atlantic for them. (Laughter.)

The shark was one of the most slandered of creatures, and vet it was one of the most amiable of living things It was created to be a scavenger of the sea. Its business was to clear up the mess, and if a man happened to constitute the mess, it ate him. (Laughter.) He had know a shark to eat cinders, not because he liked them, but simply because they happened to be there. The pilot fish, which was credited with guiding the shark to its food, had such an affection for its master that when n shark was dragged on board it would jump up after it. and only when the ship outpaced it did it leave the side of the vessel. The shark must have some amiable qualities to so attract the pilot fish. (Laughter.)

The question. “How to live without doing anything.” had been solved bv n small fish which found an ideal homo in the mouth of the whale, where some

portion of the food swallowed by the monster found its way into its own mouth. Referring to the great age to which turtles live, the lecturer said rumours had come to his ears of one which, when turned over in the West Indies, was found to have inscribed upon it, “The Ark, Captain Noah.” Turtles lived, apparently, as long as they liked, and eventually died of disgust.