SEA-CUCUMBERS.
SEA-CUCUMBERS.
GATHERING SEA-CUCUMBERS.
Toward the end of October of every year there is a harvest of cucumbers in mid-ocean. These cucumbers, however, are not at all like those we see on our tables. In the first place, they are not vegetables, but animals, and, in the second place they grow upon the bottom of the sea. The general appearance of the creature can be seen in the accompanying cut. There are many species, but they all possess elongated worm-like bodies, with thick leathery skins, and a crown of feelers, or tentacles, about the forward extremity. All species, likewise, exercise the same astonishing method of resenting any liberties taken with their persons, by suddenly and unexpectedly ejecting their teeth, their stomach, their digestive apparatus—in fact all their insides, so to speak—in the face of the intruder, reducing themselves to a state of collapse, and making of themselves mere empty bags, until such time as their wonderful recuperative powers enable them to replace the organs so summarily disposed of; for, wonderful as it may seem, teeth, stomach, digestive organs, and all soon grow again. Moreover, these stomachs have digestive powers that are not to be despised, far surpassing even those popularly ascribed to the ostrich, for the sea-cucumber actually seems to feed upon coral, and even granite has been found in its stomach.
Sea-cucumbers, as they are popularly called, are also known by the name of trepang and sea-slug. Scientific people call them Holothuroideæ, but why, no one has ever been able to find out, since the name has no meaning. Sea-cucumbers are considered a great delicacy by the Chinese. Thousands of Chinese vessels, called junks, are fitted out every year for these fisheries. Trepangs are caught in different ways. Sometimes the patient fishermen lie along the fore-part of vessels, and with long slender bamboos, terminating in sharp hooks, gather in sea-cucumbers from the bottom of the sea, so practiced in hand and eye that the catch is never missed, and is discerned sometimes at thirty yards' distance. When the water is not more than four or five fathoms deep, divers are sent down to gather these culinary monsters, as seen in the illustration, the boat and junk remaining near to receive the harvest.
THE PROCESS OF SCALDING.