Jules Verne

“ Now then, at the spot indicated on the world map, one of these seagoing rivers was rolling by, the Kuroshio of the Japanese, the Black Current: heated by perpendicular rays from the tropical sun, it leaves the Bay of Bengal, crosses the Strait of Malacca, goes up the shores of Asia, and curves into the north Pacific as far as the Aleutian Islands, carrying along trunks of camphor trees and other local items, the pure indigo of its warm waters sharply contrasting with the ocean's waves. It was this current the Nautilus was about to cross. ”

“ Ned Land replied.
"Genus Balistes, family Scleroderma, order Plectognatha," Conseil muttered.
Assuredly, Ned and Conseil in combination added up to one outstanding naturalist.
The Canadian was not mistaken. Cavorting around the Nautilus was a school of triggerfish with flat bodies, grainy skins, armed with stings on their dorsal fins, and with four prickly rows of quills quivering on both sides of their tails. Nothing could have been more wonderful than the skin covering them: white underneath, gray above, with spots of gold sparkling in the dark eddies of the waves. ”

“ Bony fish are subdivided into six orders. Primo, the acanthopterygians, whose upper jaw is fully formed and free–moving, and whose gills take the shape of a comb. This order consists of fifteen families, in other words, three–quarters of all known fish. Example: the common perch."
"Pretty fair eating," Ned Land replied.
"Secundo," Conseil went on, "the abdominals, whose pelvic fins hang under the abdomen to the rear of the pectorals but aren't attached to the shoulder bone, an order that's divided into five families and makes up the great majority of freshwater fish. Examples: carp, pike." ”

“ At noon on this day of November 8, we hereby begin our voyage of exploration under the waters."
"May God be with us!" I replied.
"And now, professor," the captain added, "I'll leave you to your intellectual pursuits. I've set our course east–northeast at a depth of fifty meters. Here are some large–scale charts on which you'll be able to follow that course. The lounge is at your disposal, and with your permission, I'll take my leave."
Captain Nemo bowed. I was left to myself, lost in my thoughts. They all centered on the Nautilus's commander. ”

“ The mineral and organic substances it holds in suspension actually increase its translucency. In certain parts of the Caribbean Sea, you can see the sandy bottom with startling distinctness as deep as 145 meters down, and the penetrating power of the sun's rays seems to give out only at a depth of 300 meters. But in this fluid setting traveled by the Nautilus, our electric glow was being generated in the very heart of the waves. ”

“ If we accept the hypotheses of the microbiologist Ehrenberg—who believes that these underwater depths are lit up by phosphorescent organisms—nature has certainly saved one of her most prodigious sights for residents of the sea, and I could judge for myself from the thousandfold play of the light. ”

“ Then, during the Silurian period, the tops of mountains gradually appeared above the waves, islands emerged, disappeared beneath temporary floods, rose again, were fused to form continents, and finally the earth's geography settled into what we have today. ”

“ Conseil said, "the lophobranchians, which have fully formed, free–moving jaws but whose gills consist of little tufts arranged in pairs along their gill arches. This order includes only one family. Examples: seahorses and dragonfish."
"Bad, very bad!" the harpooner replied.
"Sexto and last," Conseil said, "the plectognaths, whose maxillary bone is firmly attached to the side of the intermaxillary that forms the jaw, and whose palate arch is locked to the skull by sutures that render the jaw immovable, an order lacking true pelvic fins and which consists of two families. ”

“ This liquid mass totals 2,250,000,000 cubic miles and could form a sphere with a diameter of sixty leagues, whose weight would be three quintillion metric tons. To appreciate such a number, we should remember that a quintillion is to a billion what a billion is to one, in other words, there are as many billions in a quintillion as ones in a billion! ”