Curiosities of Science, Past and Present / A Book for Old and Young

by John Timbs

COLOUR OF THE RED SEA.

M. Ehrenberg, while navigating the Red Sea, observed that the red colour of its waters was owing to enormous quantities of a new animal, which has received the name of oscillatoria rubescens, and which seems to be the same with what Haller has described as a purple conferva swimming in water; yet Dr. Bonar, in his work entitled The Desert of Sinai, records:

Blue I have called the sea; yet not strictly so, save in the far distance. It is neither a red nor a blue sea, but emphatically green,—yes, green, of the most brilliant kind I ever saw. This is produced by the immense tracts of shallow water, with yellow sand beneath, which always gives this green to the sea, even in the absence of verdure on the shore or sea-weeds beneath. The blue of the sky and the yellow of the sands meeting and intermingling in the water, form the green of the sea; the water being the medium in which the mixing or fusing of the colours takes place.