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Anciata Directory 06
Page 01
While the French explorer, Champlain, was sailing along the shores of the lake which bears his name, another equally adventurous spirit, Henry Hudson, was on his way to the western world. Hoping to open a passage to India by a voyage to the north, Hudson, an English navigator, offered in 1609 to sail under the authority of the Dutch East India Company. Driven back by ice and fog from a northeast course, he turned northwest. Searching up and down near the parallel of 40 degrees, he entered the mouth of the great river which perpetuates his name. He found the country inviting to the eye, and occupied by natives friendly in disposition. The subsequent career of this bold mariner has a mournful interest. He never returned to Holland, but, touching at Dartmouth, was restrained by the English authorities, and forbidden longer to employ his skill and experience for the benefit of the Dutch. Again entering the English service and sent once more to discover the northwest passage, he sailed into the waters of the bay which still bears his name, where cold and hunger transformed the silent discontent of his crew into open mutiny, and they left the fearless navigator to perish amid the icebergs of the frozen north.
In No. 4 we have an illustration of the tube-mouth or Solenostoma, one of the two known kinds of fish in which the female shows a sense of her position as a mother. The tube-mouth, as you can see at a glance, is a close relation of our old friend the seahorse, whose disguised and undisguised forms in Australia and the Mediterranean we have already observed when dealing with the question of animal masqueraders. Solenostoma is a native of the Indian Ocean, from Zanzibar to China. In the male, the lower pair of fins are separate, as is usual among fish; but in the female, represented in the accompanying sketch, they are lightly joined at the edge, so as to form a sort of pouch like a kangaroo's, in which the eggs are deposited after being laid, and thus carried about in the mother's safe keeping. No. 5 shows the arrangement of this pouch in detail, with the eggs inside it. The mother Solenostoma not only takes charge of the spawn while it is hatching in this receptacle, but also looks after the young fry, like the father stickleback, till they are of an age to go off on their own account in quest of adventures. The most frequent adventure that happens to them on the way is, of course, being eaten.
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