Neither is the sight of a large turtle comforting when one does not know exactly what it is, and the coiling of a sea-snake around one’s legs, although it has only one’s hands to bite at, is, to say the least, unpleasant. A little fish called the stone-fish is one of the enemies of the diver. It seems to make its habitation under the pearl-shell, as it is only when picking up a shell that any one has been known to be bitten. I remember well the first time I was bitten by this spiteful member of the finny tribe. I dropped my bag of shells, and hastened to the surface; but in this short space of time my hand and arm had so swollen that it was with difficulty I could get the dress off, and then was unable to work for three days, suffering intense pain the while. Afterward I learned that staying down a couple of hours after a bite will stop any further discomfort, the pressure of water causing much bleeding at the bitten part, and thus expelling the poison. All the oysters when brought ashore are opened in vats of water, and carefully examined for the pearls they may contain half embedded in their mantles; but very few reward the diver with gems worth selling separately or otherwise than by weight as “seed” pearls. Many divers, therefore, do not themselves take the trouble of opening what they catch, but sell them unopened at a few cents a dozen, preferring the small and steady assured income to the chances of failure or a fortune. The round, flat, beautiful shells are saved, and their sale (for mother-of-pearl work) brings nearly as much money into the pearl-fishing communities in the course of a season as is derived from the pearls themselves. What beauty, as well as usefulness, have shells! And how wide is the science (conchology) that deals with them, and tells us not only their structure and manner of life, but interprets the part which their extraordinary forms, ornaments, colors, and appendages play in their “struggle for existence” down in that populous green under-world of the waters! [Illustration: ON THE GULF STREAM SLOPE, FROM ONE TO TWO MILES BELOW THE SURFACE.]