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Section 13 of Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 17. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Abai in May 2023. Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 17. Selected excerpts from A Visit to Ceylon by Ernst Haeckel

Ernst Haeckel, born 1834 Ernst Haeckel, the German naturalist, is a scholar who unites to eminence in scientific research and discovery the gift of attractive literary presentation. In his own country, his position is that of one who has made valuable original contributions to the study of morphology and been the ablest exponent of the Darwinian theory. His more untechnical writings have a charm, a literary value, rarely to be found in the work of a specialist in science. Born in Potsdam, Germany, February 16, 1834,

Haeckel studied the natural sciences at Berlin, Würzburg and Vienna, taking his medical degree in 1858 and practising that profession a short time in the former city. During 1859 and 1860, he made a journey through Italy and Sicily in the interest of science,

his work on The Radiator, 1862, being a result. Later portions were added in 1887 and 1888. In 1861 he settled in Jena for the study of comparative anatomy, but soon turned to the specific investigation of zoology. After holding subordinate positions, he was appointed in 1865 full professor at Jena,

and his lectures embraced, besides zoology, the subjects of comparative anatomy, evolution, histology and paleontology. His research has had to do especially with the lower ranks of marine animals and, above all, with deep sea life in its simplest forms. The material for such study was gathered from many and extended experiences in the North Sea, the Mediterranean, the Canary Isles, and the Indian Ocean. These travels and researches were the basis of works like that

on the history of the development of the Siphonophora, 1869, and his Biological Studies, 1870. Books of this nature, too, were introductory to greater representative works on natural philosophy and the development theory, such as Calceria's Sponges, 1872, Natural History of Creation, 1868, which has received the honour of translation into twelve languages, and the masterwork General Morphology of Organisms, 1866.

More popular writings, making him known to a public much wider than the biologist ever addresses, are those On the Division of Labour in Nature and Human Life, 1869, On the Origin and Genealogy of the Human Race, 1870, Life in the Great Marine Animals, 1870, The Arabian Corals, 1873, based on studies in the Red Sea,

The System of the Medusa, 1880, and A Visit to Ceylon, the latter a work which in English translation has won many admiring readers. For the last dozen years or more, Professor Haeckel has given much of his time to the deep-sea explorations of the HMS Challenger expedition, and his voluminous reports written in the English tongue with accompanying illustrations contain descriptions of no less than 4,000 new kinds of marine animals.

His Plankton Studies, 1890, state his general biologic conclusions upon the life and growth of sea organisms, and his very interesting Monism as the link between religion and science constitutes a great naturalist's confession of faith. A man of many travels and much culture, of immense energy, learning and power of original research, Professor Haeckel holds a dominant position in his own land among the savants of science.

His great work in morphology brought into a systematic philosophy the brilliant hypothesis of Darwin, whom he was the first German to defend and expound at a time when the development theory was looked at askance. And in writings like that, from which the selections are made, he adds aesthetic and human interest to subjects more often treated after the manner of the arid and technical specialist.

The Ceylon sketches have picturesqueness, colour, enthusiasm. They impart a sense not only of the order, but of the wonder and beauty of science. At Peradenia, from A Visit to Ceylon In the central province of Ceylon, and at a height of 1,500 feet above the sea, stands the capital, formerly the residence of the kings of the island, the famous town of Kandy, and only a few miles away from it is a small town which was also for a short time a royal residence five centuries ago. At this place the English government made a botanical garden in 1819, and Dr. Gardner was the first director.

His successor, the late Dr. Thwaites, the very meritorious compiler of the first Flora Zeylanica, for thirty years did all he could to improve and carry out the purpose of this garden in a manner worthy of its advantages of climate and position. When he retired, a year or two before his death, Dr. Henry Triman was appointed director, and from him, immediately on my arrival, I received a most friendly invitation.

I accepted it all the more gladly, because in Europe I had already read and heard much of the marvels of plant life at Peradenia. Nor were my high anticipations disappointed. If Ceylon is a paradise for every botanist and lover of flowers, then Peradenia deserves to be called the very heart of paradise. Peradenia and Candi are connected with Colombo by a railway, the first made in Ceylon, the journey occupying from first to last between four and five hours.

I started from Colombo at seven in the morning of the 4th of December and reached Peradeña at about eleven. Like all Europeans in Ceylon, I found I must travel in the first class, not noblesse, but whiteness oblige. The second class is used only by the yellow and tawny burgers and half-breeds,

the descendants of the Portuguese and Dutch, The third class, of course, carries the natives, the dark Sinhalese and the nearly black Tamils. The only wonder to me is that there is not a fourth for these last and a fifth for the despised low-cased Hindus. The natives are always great patrons of railway travelling. It is the only pleasure on which they are prepared to spend money, all the more so as it is a cheap one.

Directly after the railway was opened, the natives began travelling by the wonderful road every day and all day long for the mere pleasure of it. The carriages are airy and light, the first class well provided with protection against the heat, with wide eaves and Venetian blinds. The engine drivers and the guards, in their white clothes with solar helmets, are Englishmen. The line is worked with order and punctuality, like all the English railways. The first two hours' ride from Colombo to Peradenia lies across a level country,

most of it covered with marshy jungle, varied by rice fields and water meadows. In these, herds of black buffaloes lie half in the water, while graceful white herons pick the insects off their backs. Farther on, the line gradually approaches the hills, and after Rambucana station begins to work upwards.

For an hour, between this and the next station, Kaduganaba, the line is in point of scenery one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. The road winds with many zigzags up the steep northern face of a vast basin or cirque. At first, the eye is fascinated by the changing aspect of the immediate foreground. immense blocks of gneiss stand up amid the luxuriant masses of dense forest which fill the ravines on each side

creepers of the loveliest species fling themselves from one treetop to the next as they tower above the undergrowth enchanting little cascades tumble down the cliffs and close by the railroad we often come upon the old high road from colombo to candy formerly so busy a scene, which was constructed by the English government to enable them to keep possession of the ancient capital. Further on we command wider views, now of the vast park-like valley which grows below us as we mount higher, and now of the lofty blue mountain range which stands up calm and proud beyond its southern wall.

Although the forms of the higher hills are monotonous and not particularly picturesque, for the most part low, undulating shoulders of granite and gneiss, still a few more prominent peaks rise conspicuous, as for instance the curious table rock known as the Bible Rock. Sensation Rock, as it is called, is one of the most striking and impressive features of the scenery. The railway, after passing through several tunnels, here runs under overhanging

rocks along the very edge of a cliff, with a fall of from twelve to fourteen hundred feet, almost perpendicular, into the verdurous abyss below. Dashing waterfalls come foaming down from the mountain wall on the left, rush under the bridges over which the line is carried, and throwing themselves with a mighty leap into mid-air, are lost in mist before they reach the bottom of the gorge, making floating rainbows where the sun falls upon them.

The green depths below and the valley at our feet are covered partly with jungle and partly with cultivation. Scattered huts, gardens, and terraced rice fields can be discerned. The lofty head of the Tallypot palm, the proud queen of the tribe in Ceylon, towers above the scrub on every side. Its trunk is perfectly straight and white, like a slender marble column, and often more than a hundred feet high. Each of the fans that compose its crown of leaves covers a semicircle of from 12 to 16 feet radius,

a surface of 150 to 200 square feet, and they, like every part of the plant, have their uses, particularly for thatching roofs. But they are more famous because they were formerly used exclusively instead of paper by the Singalese, and even now often serve this purpose. The ancient Puskola manuscripts in the Buddhist monasteries are all written with an iron stylus on this Ola paper,

made of narrow strips of talipod leaves boiled and then dried. The proud talipod palm flowers but once in its life, usually between its fiftieth and eightieth year. The tall pyramidal spike of bloom rises immediately above the sheaf of leaves to a height of thirty or forty feet, and is composed of myriads of small, yellowish-white blossoms. As soon as the nuts are ripe, the tree dies.

By a happy accident, an unusual number of talipod palms were in flower at the time of my visit. I counted sixty between Rambucana and Kaduganawa, and above a hundred in my whole journey. Excursions are frequently made to this point from Columbo to see the strange and magnificent scene. The railroad, like the old high road, is at its highest level above the sea at the Kaduganawa Pass, and a lighthouse-shaped column stands here in memory of the engineer of the carriage road, Captain Dawson.

We are here on the dividing ridge of two watersheds. All the hundred little streams which we have hitherto passed, threading their silver way through the velvet verdure of the valley, flow either to the Kelani Ganga or to the Maha Oya, both reaching the sea on the western coast. The brooks which tumble from the eastern shoulder of Kaduganawa all join the Mahavelli Ganga,

which flows southward not far below. This is the largest river in the island, being about 134 miles long, and it enters the sea on the east coast near Trinkomali. The railway runs along its banks, which are crowded with plantations of sugarcane, and in a quarter of an hour from the pass we reach Peradenia, the last station before Khandi. The entrance to the garden is through a fine avenue of old India rubber trees. This is the same as the Indian species, of which the milky juice,

when inspissated, becomes caoutchouc, and of which young plants are frequently grown in sitting rooms in our cold northern climate for the sake of the bright polished green of its oval leathery leaves. But while with us these India rubber plants are greatly admired when their inch-thick stems reach the ceiling and their rare branches bear fifty leaves, more or less, in the hot moisture of their native land they attain the size of a noble forest tree, worthy to compare with our oaks.

An enormous crown of thousands of leaves growing on horizontal boughs, spreading 40 to 50 feet on every side, covers a surface as wide as a good-sized mansion, and the base of the trunk throws out a circle of roots often from 100 to 200 feet in diameter, more than the whole height of the tree. These very remarkable roots generally consist of 20 or 30 main roots, thrown out from strongly marked ribs in the lower part of the trunk and spreading like huge creeping snakes over the surface of the soil. The India rubber tree is indeed called the snake tree by the natives

and has been compared by poets to laocorn entwined by serpents. Very often, however, the roots grow up from the ground like strong upright poles, and so form stout props, enabling the parent tree to defy all storms unmoved. The spaces between these props form perfect little rooms or sentry boxes, in which a man can stand upright and be hidden.

These pillar roots are developed here in many other gigantic trees of very different families. I had scarcely exhausted my surprise at this avenue of snake-trees, when exactly in the middle, beyond the entrance of the gate, my eye was caught by another wonderful sight. An immense bouquet there greets the visitor, a clump of all the palms indigenous to the island, together with many foreign members of this noblest growth of the tropics, all wreathed with flowering creepers, and their trunks covered with graceful parasitical ferns. Another but even larger and finer group of palms stood further on at the end of the entrance avenue, and was moreover surrounded by a splendid parterre of flowering plants. The path here divided, that to the left leading to the director's bungalow, situated on a slight rise.

This inviting home is like most of the villa residences in Ceylon, a low, one-storied building surrounded by an airy veranda with a projecting roof supported on light white columns. Both pillars and roof are covered with garlands of the loveliest climbers, large flowered orchids, fragrant vanilla, splendid fuchsias and other brilliant blossoms,

and a choice collection of flowering plants and ferns decorate the beds which lie near the house. Above it weigh the shadowy boughs of the finest Indian trees, and numbers of butterflies and chafers, lizards and birds animate the beautiful spot. I was especially delighted with the small barred squirrels, which looked particularly pretty here, though they are common and very tame in all the gardens of Salem.

As the bungalow stands on the highest point of the gardens, and a broad velvet lawn slopes down from it, the open hall of the veranda commands a view of a large portion of the garden, with a few of the finest groups, as well as the belt of tall trees which enclose the planted land. Beyond this park-like ground rise the wooded heads of the mountains which guard the basin of Peradenia. The beautiful Mahavelli River flows round the garden in a wide reach and divides it from the hill country. Thus it lies in a horseshoe-shaped peninsula on the landward side where it opens into the valley of Kandi. It is effectually protected by a high and impenetrable thicket of bamboo,

mixed with a chevaux de frise of thorny ratten palms and other creepers. The climate too is extraordinarily favorable to vegetation. At a height of 1,500 feet above the sea, the tropical heat of the mountain basin, combined with the heavy rainfall on the neighboring mountains,

make of Peradegna an admirable natural forcing house, and it can easily be conceived how lavishly the tropical flora here displays its wonderful productive powers. My first walk through the garden in the company of the accomplished director convinced me that this was in fact the case, and although I had heard and read much of the charms of the prodigal

vegetation of the tropics, and longed and dreamed of seeing them, still the actual enjoyment of the fabulous reality far exceeded my highest expectations, even after I had already made acquaintance with the more conspicuous forms of this southern flora at and near Colombo and Bombay. During the four days I was so happy as to spend at Peradenia, I made greater strides in my purview of life and nature in the vegetable world than I could have made at home by the most diligent

study in so many months. Indeed, when two months later I visited Peradegna for the second, and, alas, for the last time, and spent three more happy days in that paradise, it enchanted me to the full as much when I quitted it as it had at the first glance, only I saw it with wider understanding and increased knowledge. I cannot sufficiently thank my excellent friend Dr. Tryman for his kind hospitality and valuable instruction.

The seven days I spent in his delightful bungalow were indeed to me seven days of creation. Translation of Clara Bell Color and Form in the Ceylon Coral Banks From A Visit to Ceylon Nine years since, in 1873, when I made an excursion among the coral reefs of the Cynay

coast, and for the first time had a glimpse of the wonderful forms of life in their submarine gardens of marvels, they had excited my utmost interest, and in a popular series of lectures on Arabian corals, published with five coloured plates, I had endeavoured to sketch these wonderful creatures and their communities with various other animals. The corals of Ceylon, which I first became acquainted with here at Galle, and subsequently studied more closely at

Bellingham, reminded me vividly of that delightful experience, and at the same time afforded me a multitude of new ones. For though the marine fauna of the Indian seas is on the whole nearly allied to the Arabian fauna of the Red Sea, many genera and species being common to both, yet the number and variety of forms of life is considerably greater in the vast basin of the Indian Ocean with its diversified coast than in the pent-up waters of the Arabian Gulf with its uniform

conditions of existence. Thus I found the general physiognomy of the coral reefs in the two situations different, in spite of many features in common. While the reefs at tour are for the most part conspicuous for warm colouring, yellow, orange, red, and brown, in the coral gardens of Ceylon green predominates in a great variety of shades and tones, yellow-green Alcyonia growing with sea-green Heteropora, and malachite-like Anthophylla side-by-side with olive-green

Milepora, Madrepora and Astraea of emerald hue with brown-green Montipora and Meandrina. Ransonette had already pointed out how singularly and universally green prevails in the colouring of Ceylon. Not only is the greater portion of this evergreen isle clothed with an unfading tapestry of rich verdure, but the animals of the most widely dissimilar classes which live in its woods are conspicuous for their green colouring. This is seen in all the commonest birds and lizards, butterflies and beetles, which are

of every shade of brilliant green. In the same way, the innumerable inhabitants of the sea, of all classes, are coloured green, such as many fishes and crustacea, worms and sea anemones. Indeed, creatures which elsewhere seldom or never appear in green livery wear it here, for instance several starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, also some enormous bivalves

and brachiopoda and others. An explanation of this phenomenon is to be found in Darwin's principles, particularly in the law of adaptation by selection of similar colouring or sympathetic affinity of colour, as I have elucidated in my History of Creation. The less the predominant colouring of any creature varies from that of its surroundings,

the less will it be seen by its foes, the more easily can it steal upon its prey, and the more it is protected and fitted for the struggle for existence. Natural selection will at the same time constantly confirm the similarity between the prevailing colour of the animal and of its surroundings, because it is beneficial to the animal. The green coral banks of Ceylon, with their preponderance of green inhabitants, are as

instructive in their bearing on this theory as are the green land animals which people the evergreen forests and thickets of the island. But in purity and splendour of colouring, the sea creatures are even more remarkable than the fauna of the forests. It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that this prevailing green hue produces a

monotonous uniformity of colouring. On the contrary, it is impossible to weary of admiring it, for on the one hand the most wonderful gradations and modifications may be traced through it, and on the other, numbers of vividly and gaudily colored forms are scattered among them. And just as the gorgeous red, yellow, violet or blue colours of many birds and insects look doubly splendid in the dark green forest of Ceylon, so do the no less brilliant hues of some marine creatures on the coral banks.

Many small fishes and crustaceans are particularly distinguished by such gaudy colouring, with very elegant and extremely singular markings, as they seek their food among the ramifications of the coral trees. Some few large corals are also conspicuously and strikingly coloured. Thus, for instance, many Pociloporae are rose-coloured,

many of the Astreidae are red and yellow, and many of the Heteroporae and Madreporae are violet and brown, etc. But, unfortunately, these gorgeous colours are for the most part very evanescent, and disappear as soon as the coral is taken out of the water, often at a mere touch. The sensitive creatures which have displayed their open cups of tentacles

in the greatest beauty then suddenly close and become inconspicuous, dull, and colourless. But if the eye is enchanted merely by the lovely hues of the coral reef and its crowded population, it is still more delighted by the beauty and variety of form displayed by these creatures. Just as the radiated structure of one individual coral polyp resembles a true flower, so the whole structure of the branded coral stock resembles the growth of plants, trees, and shrubs.

It was for this reason that corals were universally supposed to be really plants, and it was long before their true nature as animals was generally believed in. These coral gardens display indeed a lovely and truly fairy-like scene, as we row over them in a boat at low tide and on a calm sea. Close under the fort of Galle, the sea is so shallow that the keel of the boat grates on the points of the stony structure,

and from the wall of the fort above the separate coral growths can be distinguished through the crystal water. A great variety of most beautiful and singular species here grow close together, on so narrow a space that in a very few days I had made a splendid collection. Mr. Scott's garden, in which my kind host allowed me to place them to dry, looked strange indeed during these days. The splendid tropical plants seemed to vie with the strange marine creatures who had intruded on their domain for the prize for beauty and splendor,

and the enchanted naturalist, whose gladdened eye wandered from one to the other, could not decide whether the fauna or the flora best deserved to take it. The coral animals imitated the forms of the loveliest flowers in astonishing variety, and the orchids, on the other hand, mimicked the forms of insects. The two great kingdoms of the organized world seemed here to have exchanged aspects. Most of the corals which I collected in Galle and Belegum I procured by the help of divers.

These I found here to be quite as clever and capable of endurance as the Arabs of Ture nine years before. Armed with a strong crowbar, they uprooted the limestone structure of even very large coral stocks from their attachment to the rocky base and raised them most skillfully up to the boat. These masses often weighed from fifty to eighty pounds, and it cost no small toil and care to lift them unendured into the boat. Some kinds of coral are so fragile that in taking them out of the water they break by their own weight,

and so, unfortunately, it is impossible to convey many of the most delicate kinds uninjured to land. This is the case, for instance, with certain trail turbinariae, whose foliaceous stalk grows in the shape of an inverted spiral cone, and of the many-branched heteropora, which resembles an enormous stag's antler with hundreds of twigs. It is not from above, however, that a coral reef displays its full beauty,

even when we row close over it, and when the ebb tide has left the water so shallow that its projections grind against the boat. On the contrary, it is essential to take a plunge into the sea. In the absence of a diving bell, I tried to dive to the bottom and keep my eyes open under water, and after a little practice I found this easy. Nothing could be more wonderful than the mysterious green sheen which pervades this submarine world.

The enchanted eye is startled by the wonderful effects of light, which are so different from those of the upper world with its warm and rosy colouring, and they lend a double interest and strangeness to the forms and movements of the myriads of creatures that swarm among the corals. The diver is in all reality in a new world. There is in fact a whole multitude of singular fishes, crustacea, mollusca, radiator, worms, etc., whose food consists solely of the coral polyps among which they live, and these coral

eaters, which may be regarded as parasites in the true sense of the word, have acquired, by adaptation to their peculiar mode of life, the most extraordinary forms. More especially are they provided with weapons of offense and defense in the most remarkable character. But just as it is well known that no man may walk unpunished under the palms, so the naturalist cannot swim with impunity among the coral banks.

The ocean nights, under whose protection these coral fairy bowers of the sea flourish, threaten the intruding mortal with a thousand perils. The millipora, as well as the medusae, which float among them, burn him wherever they touch, like the most venomous nettles. The sting of the fish, known as synacea, is as painful and dangerous as that of the scorpion.

Numbers of crabs nip his tender flesh with their powerful claws. Black sea urchins thrust their footlong spines, covered with fine prickles set the wrong way, into the sole of his foot, where they break off and remain, causing very serious wounds. But worst of all is the injury to the skin in trying to secure the coral itself. The numberless points and angles with which their limestone skeleton is armed

inflict a thousand little wounds at every attempt to detach and remove a portion. Never in my life have I been so gashed and mangled as after a few days of diving and coral-fishing at Gale, and I suffered from the consequences for several weeks after. But what are these transient sufferings to a naturalist, when set in the scale against the fairy-like scenes of delight with which a plunge among these marvellous coral groves

enriches his memory for life? Translation of Clara Bell End of section 13