Yet neither last night's outlook nor that morning's was without result.

For as the steamer stopped last night to pack her engines, and slipped along under sail at some three knots an hour, we made out clearly that the larger diffused patches of phosphorescence were Medusae, slowly opening and shutting, and rolling over and over now and then, giving out their light, as they rolled, seemingly from the thin limb alone, and not from the crown of their bell.

And as we watched, a fellow-passenger told how, between Ceylon and Singapore, he had once witnessed that most rare and unexplained phenomenon of a 'milky sea,' of which Dr.Collingwood writes (without, if I remember right, having seen it himself) in his charming book, A Naturalist's Rambles in the China Seas.

Our friend described the appearance as that of a sea of shining snow rather than of milk, heaving gently beneath a starlit but moonless sky.

A bucket of water, when taken up, was filled with the same half-luminous whiteness, which stuck to its sides when the water was drained off.