THE OCEAN AND ITS LIVING WONDERS.
Perfection in Nature’s Smallest Works—A Word on Scientific
Classification—Protozoa—Blind Life—Rhizopoda—Foraminifera—A
Robbery Traced by Science—Microscopic Workers—Paris
Chalk—Infusoria—The “Sixth Sense of Man”—Fathers of Nations—Milne‐
Edwards’ Submarine Explorations—The Salt‐water Aquarium—The
Compensating Balance Required—Brighton and Sydenham—Practical Uses
of the Aquarium—Medusæ: their Beauty—A Poet’s Description—Their
General Characteristics—Battalions of “Jelly‐fish”—Polyps—A
Floating Colony—A Marvellous Organism—The Graceful Agalma—Swimming
Apparatus—Natural Fishing Lines—The “Portuguese Man‐of‐
War”—Stinging Powers of the Physalia—An Enemy to the Cuttle‐fish.
Pliny says that “Nature is nowhere more perfect than in her smaller
works.” How gradually, yet beautifully, do the lower forms of life ascend
to the higher! Here we may well remember the following: Scientific
naturalists, men of logical minds arranging the facts of Nature with
methodical and almost mathematical precision, have distributed the forms
of animal life into divisions, classes, orders, families, genera, and
species. These divisions, however convenient, are, it must be noted,
merely of human invention, subject to alteration as knowledge
increases—subject even to positive mistake. Linnæus tells us that _Natura
non facit saltus_—Nature does not jump or leap from one stage to another,
but passes almost insensibly, life merging into other life.
A word commonly employed in connection with the lower forms of marine life
also requires some passing notice. The term _zoophyte_, derived from two
Greek words signifying respectively _animal_ and _plant_, would seem
appropriate enough in describing generally many of the organisms found in
the great deep. But the term as now used signifies an animal, and nothing
but one, however plant‐like it may appear.
The simplest forms of marine animal life are found in the extensive group
known as the Protozoa. Varied as they are, they may be generally described
as devoid of articulate skeleton, or nervous system; they are animals, a
large part of them microscopic, with a vegetative existence. “In their
obscure and blind life,” says Figuier, “have they consciousness or
instinct? Do they know what takes place at the three‐thousandth part of an
inch from their microscopic bodies? To the Creator alone does the
knowledge of this mystery belong.”
The limits of this work preclude the possibility of details. To the
division Protozoa belong the sponges, already described, the Rhizopods
(_Rhizopoda_), _root‐footed_ animals, and the _Infusoria_, animalcules so
small that a drop of water may contain millions.
The Rhizopods are found both in fresh and salt water, but the marine forms
are by far the more numerous. They are simply minute lumps of diaphanous
jelly, the quantity of matter in them being so infinitesimal, and their
transparency so great, that the eye, assisted by the powers of the
microscope, can only take cognisance of them by the most careful
arrangement of light. But for all that, they are known to have feet or
feelers, to have digestive apparatus—some of them being, for their size,
quite voracious feeders—which may be seen stuffed with microscopic _algæ_,
or sea‐weeds. It is believed that they are multiplied by parting with
portions of their bodies, which become separate beings.
The _Reticulosa_, or _Foraminifera_, form an order of this group. They are
small calcareous shells, as a rule, nearly invisible to the naked eye, and
enclosing, or once having enclosed, a living organism. The sand of the
sea‐shore is often one‐half composed of them. M. d’Orbigny found in three
grammes (forty‐six grains troy) of sand from the Antilles no less than
440,000 of these minute shells. Ehrenberg, the German microscopist, was
once invited by the Prussian Government to assist in tracing the robbery
of a special case of wine. It had been packed in sand only found in an
ancient sea‐board of Germany, and from this fact and knowledge of locality
the thief was detected. The _Foraminifera_, small as they are, have helped
to form enormous deposits, obstruct navigation in gulfs and straits, and
fill up ports, as may be seen at Alexandria. In various geological strata
they are found; they exist in immense quantities in the chalk cliffs of
this country. In the Paris chalk their remains are so abundant that a
block of little more than a cubic yard has been computed to contain _three
thousand millions_! “As,” says Figuier, “the chalk from these quarries has
served to build Paris, as well as the towns and villages of the
surrounding departments, it may be said that Paris, and other great
centres of population which adjoin it, are built with the shells of these
microscopic animals.”
[Illustration: FORAMINIFERA IN A PIECE OF ROCK.]
The _Infusoria_ almost baffle the attempts of naturalists to classify
them, while their very existence would have escaped us but for the
discovery of the microscope, “the sixth sense of man,” as Michelet happily
termed it. In the tropics, water collected at a great depth was found to
contain 116 species; in the Antarctic regions the very ice was found to
contain nearly fifty different species. The very largest kinds can hardly
be seen by the naked eye. They are generally nearly colourless, but some
of them are nevertheless green, blue, red, brown, and even blackish. Some
of those most commonly noted, on account of their superior size, are
furnished with hairy _cilia_, which act as paddles, while certain of them
appear to be employed in conveying food to the mouth.
[Illustration: INHABITANTS OF THE BRITISH SEAS.
1. Pilot fish,
2. Piper,
3. Eagle Ray,
4. Oysters,
5. Spotted Ray,
6. Star fish,
7. Hermit Crab,
8. Common shore Crab,
9. Common Lobster,
10. Sea Anemones (various)
11. Corals,
12. Conger Eel,
13. Octopus,
14. Sea weeds.]
The _Infusoria_ reproduce their species in several ways: by a kind of
budding, like plants, by sexual reproduction, and by fission—_i.e._, the
spontaneous division of the animal into two parts. “By this mode of
propagation,” says Dujardin, “an Infusorian is the half of the one which
preceded it, the fourth of the parent of that, the eighth of its
grandparent, and so on.” The process is represented in the accompanying
figures, A and B being the adult, C the same in course of separation, and
D after completion. “This mode of generation, however,” says Figuier,
“enables us to comprehend the almost miraculous multiplication of these
beings. The amount defies calculation, if we wished to be at all precise.
We may, however, arrive at a proximate estimate of the number which may be
derived from a single individual by this process of fission. It has been
found that at the end of a month two _Stylonichiæ_ would have a progeny of
more than 1,048,000 individuals, and that in a lapse of forty‐two days a
single _Paramecium_ could produce much more than 1,364,000 forms like
itself.” In a year it would have the proud satisfaction of being the
father of an Infusorian nation!
[Illustration: PROPAGATION OF AN INFUSORIAN BY SPONTANEOUS DIVISION.]
Many of the _Infusoria_ are subject to metamorphoses, while others can
remain long periods, and in a dried and torpid state, and then awake to
action. One of the largest of these curious organisms, which sometimes
actually attains to the size of the twelfth of an inch, is the
_Kondylostoma patens_, remarkable for its voracity. It lives upon sea‐
weed, and is common to every shore, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic.
[Illustration: KONDYLOSTOMA PATENS (MAGNIFIED 300 TIMES).]
The inhabitants of the sea are, there can be no doubt, much more numerous
than those of the earth. Charles Darwin has remarked that our terrestrial
forests do not maintain nearly so many living beings as do marine forests
in the very bosom of the ocean. Its surface and its depths, its plains and
its mountains, its valleys and precipices, teem with organisms, the like
of which have no counterpart on the land, and which are only partly
understood to‐day, although the invention and adoption of the aquarium
have greatly facilitated the study of them.
Many years ago Dr. Milne‐Edwards, in a voyage round the coast of Sicily,
employed a diver’s apparatus to enable him to descend and examine the
bottom of the sea. It included a metallic casque and helmet, with visor or
window of glass fitting closely by means of water‐tight packing round the
neck. It communicated with an air‐pump above by a flexible tube; the diver
had a rope attached by which he could be hoisted immediately, and a signal
cord to give alarm in case of need; he wore heavy lead shoes, which gave
him steadiness and enabled him to maintain his upright position in the
water. Milne‐Edwards made the descent in several fathoms of water, and
with perfect safety. Ariel’s song had not to be applied to him:—
“Full fathoms five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea change”—
for he was enabled safely and successfully to examine in the most hidden
recesses and retreats of the rocks and sea many wonderful creatures, the
knowledge of which had been hitherto hidden from the scientific world.
The invention, or introduction rather, of the salt‐water aquarium enables
any one nowadays to study in comfort and at leisure the habits and
peculiarities of marine animals. There is a drawing extant of an aquarium
bearing the date 1742. Sir John Graham Dalyell, a well‐known author, had a
modest one early in this century. A sea‐anemone taken from the sea in
1828, and placed in this glass tank, was, according to his biographer,
alive and well in 1873; so that M. Figuier in claiming its first
suggestion for M. Charles des Moulins is wrong. The fact is that the
ancients kept, not for scientific, but for gastronomic purposes, fish and
molluscs in tanks, and fed and studied their habits and needs in order to
fit them for the table. These were practical aquaria.
M. des Moulins, however, and, in our own country, Gosse and Warington,
deserve full credit for advocating the establishment of these beautiful
sources of rational pleasure and improvement, and for showing how they
might best be kept in working order. To Des Moulins is also due the
proposition that the animal life therein required the presence of
vegetable life to keep it in natural condition. In the fresh‐water
aquarium duckweed was found to act efficiently, and a similar idea is now
adopted in regard to marine plants in the salt‐water aquarium. Sea‐weeds
do not usually bear transplanting, but sea water is so impregnated with
seeds or germs, that by placing a few stones or rocks in the tank a crop
of marine vegetation is ensured.
“On shell or stone is dropped the embryo seed,
And quickly vegetates a vital breed.”
Our own fish‐houses at the Zoological Gardens were first opened in 1853,
while those of the French Acclimatisation Society in the Bois de Boulogne
were inaugurated in 1861. Now almost every capital possesses one on a
grand scale. That at Naples is especially noted. At the Continental
fishery exhibitions, held at Amsterdam, The Hague, Boulogne, Havre,
Arcachon, &c., temporary aquaria always form part of the attractions.
The dimensions of the great aquarium at Brighton are as follows: Its area
is 716 feet by 100 feet, the great tank alone containing 110,000 gallons
of water, and having a plate glass front 130 feet long, through which the
habits of very large fish may be studied. The rock‐work of the tanks is
artificial, and admirably adapted to give shelter to the fish and
crustaceans which disport in them. The management of a large aquarium
involves constant care, and it is quite possible to kill its inhabitants
by too frequently changing the water—by over‐kindness, in fact.
The aquaria at Brighton and the Crystal Palace are very differently
constructed and managed. At the former there is no actual circulation of
water from one tank to another, but it can, if necessary, be renewed from
the sea; the mass of the water in the reserve tanks is small as compared
with that in the show tanks, and aëration is effected by pumping air into
the tanks through tubes of large diameter. At the Crystal Palace aquarium
a constant circulation is maintained from one tank to another; the bulk of
water in the reservoir is five times as much as that in the show tanks,
while aëration is accomplished by carrying a main over their entire
length, from which, under pressure, a small stream of water pours from a
tap into each, breaking the surface of the water, and carrying down to the
bottom of the tanks and distributing over the body of their contents
myriads of minute bubbles of air, which present an enormous oxydising
surface to the water, rendering it bright and sparkling. It does not
answer to change the water too constantly, while some obnoxious specimens,
like the flat‐fish, foul it greatly, the remedy for which is found in
putting animals in who in the economy of Nature act as scavengers. Various
small animals have to be supplied as food for the larger ones. “As the
animal life and vegetable life mutually support each other, the kind of
material necessary for maintaining the ‘compensating system’ must be
watchfully supplied. Mr. W. R. Hughes, of Birmingham, recommends the
growth of sea lettuce (_Alva latissima_) in tanks, as suitable both for
oxygenating the water and for food for the fishes; the stock plants being
introduced in the autumn months, when they are loaded with spores.” The
writer of the article in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” from which most of
the above is taken, ventures to hope that the aquarium may become useful
in a practical sense, and may determine many questions in regard to fish
life and growth concerning which we are ignorant to‐day. “It would,” says
he, “tend to the better regulation of our fisheries and to the
augmentation of our food supplies, if we knew as much about the herring or
the haddock as we do about the salmon.” It is well known that fish,
valuable as food, are too often captured at improper seasons and in a
wasteful manner.
Passing on to higher forms of animal life, the polyps and acalephæ of the
older authors, now classified as the _Cœlenterata_, we find creatures of a
superior organisation to those lately under notice. Regarded generally,
their bodies are soft and gelatinous, they possess alimentary canals and
digestive apparatus, and in nearly all cases the sexes are separate,
generation being sometimes sexual and sometimes by gemmation or budding.
This brief introduction to the subject must be taken only in a general,
not a special sense, for there are numerous exceptions to be found among
the animals classified as Cœlenterata.
“The sub‐kingdom Cœlenterata naturally divides itself into two groups—that
of the _Hydrozoa_, and that of the _Actinozoa_. The fresh‐water hydra will
serve as an example of the first, and the common sea‐anemone of the second
group. The essential difference between the two is, that in the former the
stomachal cavity is not separated from the general cavity of the body, and
the reproductive buds are external; while in the latter the stomachal
cavity is let down, as it were, as a partially‐closed sac, into the
general cavity of the body, and the reproductive buds make their
appearance between the walls of the general cavity of the alimentary or
stomachal sac, and consequently internally. But in both there is a free
communication between these two cavities—a communication obvious in the
Hydrozoa, and which may be often verified in the case of the sea‐anemones,
by the young anemones making their appearance at the mouth of the parent
anemone, having just escaped from the general cavity out into the
alimentary cavity of its body.”
[Illustration: MEDUSÆ.]
The class Hydrozoa includes seven orders, first and principally of which
let us speak of the Medusæ, of which the ordinary “jelly‐fish” is a
familiar example. This great order (_Medusidæ_) is characterised by having
a disc, more or less convex above, resembling a mushroom or expanded
umbrella, the edges of the umbrella, as well as the mouth and suckers,
commonly having tentacula, or feelers, and cilia. Taken from the sea, a
Medusa weighing fifty ounces will rapidly dissolve away to a few grains of
solid matter. These floating umbrellas or mushrooms, as they might be
termed, are of many forms, but they are all to be counted among the most
beautiful works of the Creator. Sometimes the animal is transparent as
crystal, sometimes opaline, now of a delicate rose or azure‐blue colour,
now yellow, now violet, and now, again, reflecting the prismatic colours.
“The Medusæ are animals without much consistence, containing much water,
so that we can scarcely comprehend how they resist the agitation of the
waves and the force of the currents; the waves, however, float without
hurting them, the tempest scatters without killing them. When the sea
retires, or they are withdrawn from their native waters, their substance
dissolves, the animal is decomposed, they are reduced to nothing; if the
sun is strong this disorganisation occurs in the twinkling of an eye, so
to speak.” If they are touched ever so lightly while swimming, they
contract their tentacula, fold up their umbrella, and sink into the depths
of the sea. At one period of the year the Medusæ are charged with numbers
of minute eggs, which are suspended in festoons—crystalline roes they
might be termed—from their bodies, and which in due time become living
organisms.
After all, it is to the poets we must go if we would describe the beauties
of Nature aright. Michelet, speaking of the Medusa, says:—“Why was this
name, of terrible associations, given to a creature so charming? Often
have I had my attention arrested by these castaways, which we see so often
on the shore. They are small, about the size of my hand, but singularly
pretty, of soft light shades, of an opal‐white, where it lost itself as in
a cloud of tentacles; a crown of tender lilies—the wind had overturned it;
its crown of lilac hair floated about, and the delicate umbel, that is,
its body proper, was beneath; it had touched the rock—dashed against it;
it was wounded, torn in its fine locks, which are also its organs of
respiration, absorption, and even of love.... The delicious creature, with
its visible innocence and the iridescence of its soft colours, was left
like a gliding, trembling jelly. I paused beside it, nevertheless; I
glided my hand under it, raised the motionless body cautiously, and
restored it to its natural position for swimming. Patting it in the
neighbouring water, it sank to the bottom, giving no sign of life. I
pursued my walk along the shore, but at the end of ten minutes I returned
to my Medusa. It was undulating under the wind; it had really moved
itself, and was swimming about with singular grace, its hair flying round
it as it swam; gently it retired from the rock, not quickly, but still it
went, and I soon saw it a long way off.”
The Medusæ are found in all seas, and usually inhabit the depths, although
often seen on the surface. They voyage usually in considerable battalions,
and sometimes cover miles and miles of sea. They constitute one of the
principal supports of the whale. They are themselves singularly voracious,
and snap up their prey—small molluscs, young crustaceans, and annilids—at
a mouthful. Their mouths are in the centre of the lower side of the
umbrella. They vary from a very small size to as much as a yard in
diameter, while to describe the known varieties would occupy the remainder
of this volume, so numerous are they. It has been ascertained that these
jelly‐like creatures breathe through the skin, have a distinct circulation
and some nervous sensations. Most of them produce a stinging pain when
they touch the human body, and until lately they were, adopting Cuvier’s
classification, designated _Acalephæ_, or “sea‐nettles,” in consequence.
[Illustration: PRAYA DIPHYES.]
Nearly all the other Hydrozoa are marine productions, and comprise among
them numerous beautiful forms. Take, for example, the polyp known as
_Praya diphyes_, a double, bell‐shaped body, with a long tail, as it were,
of feelers, a floating fishing‐line; or, another delicate organisation of
the same family, _Galeolaria aurantiaca_, the orange galeolaria. Here are
_two_ floating bladders with a connecting _chain of polyps_; the floats
aiding to support, as it were, a whole colony! But the large order
_Physophoridæ_ deserves more than a mere passing notice, on account of the
graceful forms of delicate tissue and colour which are included under it.
These inhabitants of the sea are essentially swimmers, having mostly true
swimming bladders, more or less numerous and of varied form; they always
float on the surface. M. de Quatrefages, the distinguished French
naturalist, describing one of these organisms, _Apolemia contorta_, tells
the reader “to figure to himself an axis of flexible crystals, sometimes
more than a mètre (forty inches) in length, all round which are attached,
by means of long peduncles or footstalks equally transparent, some
hundreds of bodies, sometimes elongated, sometimes flat, and formed like
the bud of a flower. If we add to this garland of pearls of a vivid red
colour and infinity of fine filaments, varying in thickness, and giving
life and motion to all these parts, we have even now only a very slight
and imperfect idea of this marvellous organism.”
The _Agalma rubra_ is thus described by Vogt, a great authority. “I know,”
says he, “nothing more graceful than this agalma, as it floats near the
surface of the waters, its long, transparent, garland‐like lines extended,
and their limits distinctly indicated by bundles of a brilliant vermilion
red, while the rest of the body is concealed by its very transparency; the
entire organism always swims in a slightly oblique position near the
surface, but is capable of steering itself in any direction with great
rapidity. I have had in my possession some of these garlands more than
three feet in length, in which the series of swimming‐bladders measured
more than four inches, so that in the great vase in which I kept them the
column of swimming‐bladders touched the bottom, while the aërial vesicle
floated on the surface. Immediately after its capture the columns
contracted themselves to such a point that they were scarcely perceptible,
but when left to repose in a spacious vase, all its shrunken appendages
deployed themselves round the vase in the most graceful manner imaginable,
the column of swimming‐bladders removing, immovable in their vertical
position, the float at the surface, while the different appendages soon
began to play. The polyps, planted at intervals along the common trunk, of
rose‐colour, began to agitate themselves in all directions, taking a
thousand odd forms; ... but what most excited my curiosity was the
continuous action of the fishing‐lines, retiring altogether sometimes with
the utmost precipitation. All who have witnessed these living colonies
withdraw themselves reluctantly from the strange spectacle, where each
polyp seems to play the part of the fisherman who throws his line,
furnished with baited hooks, withdrawing it when he feels a nibble, and
throwing again when he discovers his disappointment.” The agalma is
described as well armed; its tendrils have enormous stinging powers.
[Illustration: AGALMA RUBRA (THREE‐FIFTHS NATURAL SIZE).]
One family of the Physophoridæ includes the interesting creature known as
the “Portuguese man‐of‐war,” from a slight resemblance to a small vessel
with a sail up; it is also known among sailors as the sea‐bladder. The
bladder is eleven or twelve inches long, and from one to three broad. Its
appearance is glassy and transparent, and of a purply tint. Above the
bladder is a crest, limpid and pure as crystal, and veined in purple or
violet; it is the crest which the sailors believe fulfils the office of a
sail. “This bladder‐like form, with its aërial crest, is only a
hydrostatic apparatus, whose office is to lighten the animal and modify
its specific gravity.” From the bottom of the bladder a crowded mass of
organs, most of which take the form of very slender, highly contractile,
movable threads, depend; they are often several feet, and occasionally
several yards, long. Their stinging powers are great; these elegant
creatures are terrible antagonists. One French writer says that, “One day,
when sailing at sea in a small boat, I perceived one of these little
galleys, and was curious to see the form of the animal; but I had scarcely
seized it when all its fibres seemed to clasp my hand, covering it as with
bird‐lime, and scarcely had I felt it in all its freshness (for it is very
cold to the touch), when it seemed as if I had plunged my arm up to the
shoulder in a cauldron of boiling water. This was accompanied with a pain
so strange, that it was only with a violent effort I could restrain myself
from crying aloud.” Another traveller,(32) while bathing and swimming in
the surf of the Antilles, was attacked by one. “I promptly detached it,”
says he, “but many of its filaments remained glued to my skin, and the
pain I immediately experienced was so intense that I nearly fainted.” In
this case no very serious damage resulted, but during the voyage of the
_Princess Louise_ round the world a seaman was nearly killed by one.
Frédol, the historian of the expedition, says that one of the officers
noticed a magnificent Physalia, which was floating near the ship. “A young
sailor leaped naked into the sea to seize the animal. Swimming towards it,
he seized it; the creature surrounded the person of its assailant with its
numerous thread‐like filaments, which were nearly a yard in length; the
young man, overwhelmed by a feeling of burning pain, cried out for
assistance. He had scarcely strength to reach the vessel and get aboard
again before the pain and inflammation were so violent that brain fever
declared itself, and great fears were entertained for his life.” It is a
disputed point whether the Physalia is poisonous or not when eaten. It was
a commonly‐received idea in the Antilles that they are, and that the
negroes sometimes made use of them, after being dried and powdered, to
poison both men and animals. The fishermen there believe that fish which
have eaten parts of the Physalia become unfit for human food. A French
physician, M. Ricord‐Madiana, settled in Guadaloupe, made many experiments
to attempt the settlement of the question. He found that ants and flies
partook of them with impunity; a dog, a puppy, and a fowl, swallowed parts
of them nearly with impunity, the first named only seeming to have
severely felt the sting in his mouth, but recovering perfectly soon after.
The ardent experimentalist next ate, and caused his servant to eat, the
chicken which had fed on Physalia, and no inconvenience followed;
subsequently he ate twenty‐five grains of the dried and powdered animal in
a little bouillon, and he was unharmed. Yet there is some evidence on the
other side which would indicate that on occasions, at least, it is
poisonous.
The habits of the Physalia are only known in part, though they have been
studied by many scientists. Among the many denizens of the ocean, “none,”
says Gosse,(33) “take a stronger hold on the fancy of the beholder;
certainly none is more familiar than the little thing he daily marks
floating in the sun‐lit waves, as the ship glides swiftly by, which the
sailor tells him is the ‘Portuguese man‐of‐war.’ Perhaps a dead calm has
settled over the sea, and he leans over the bulwarks of the ship,
scrutinising this ocean‐rover at leisure, as it hastily rises and falls on
the long, sluggish heavings of the glassy surface. Then he sees that the
comparison of the stranger to a ship is a felicitous one, for at a little
distance it might well be mistaken for a child’s mimic boat, shining in
all the gaudy painting in which it left the toy‐shop.
“Not unfrequently one of these tiny vessels comes so close alongside that
by means of the ship’s bucket, with the assistance of a smart fellow who
has jumped into the ‘chains’ with a boat‐hook, it is captured and brought
on deck for examination. A dozen voices are, however, lifted, warning you
by no means to touch it, for well the experienced sailor knows its
terrible powers of defence. It does not now appear so like a ship as when
it was at a distance. It is an oblong bladder of tough membrane, varying
considerably in shape, for no two agree in this respect; varying also in
size, from less than an inch to the size of a man’s hat. Once, on a voyage
to Mobile, when rounding the Florida reef, I was nearly a whole day
passing through a fleet of these little Portuguese men‐of‐war, which
studded the smooth sea as far as the eye could reach, and must have
extended for many miles.” It is often to be seen on the coasts of Devon
and Cornwall, brought thither by the Gulf Stream.
[Illustration: PHYSALIA ANTARCTICA.]
The Physalia is the natural enemy of the cuttle‐fish and the flying‐fish.
One an inch in length will numb and kill a fish larger than a herring.
“Each tentacle, by a movement as rapid as a flash of light, or sudden as
an electric shock, seizes and benumbs them, winding round their bodies as
a serpent winds itself round its victim.” Mr. Bennet, who accompanied the
expedition under Admiral Fitzroy as naturalist, describes them as seizing
their prey by means of the tentacles, which are alternately contracted to
half an inch, and then shot out with amazing velocity to several feet,
dragging the helpless and entangled prey to the sucker‐like mouth and
stomach‐like cavities among the tentacles. Others have observed bold
little fish unharmed among the feelers, a proof that even a Physalia can
be good‐natured sometimes.
An attendant satellite of the Physalia is the Velella, a smaller animal of
the same family, especially abundant in tropical seas, but often seen
elsewhere. It also possesses stinging powers.
It is to the moderns we must look for anything like scientific study of
these lower forms of Nature. The later poets, too, have caught the spirit
of the age, and in some phases their utterances are artistically truer,
and therefore truer to nature, than those of the merely _hard_ scientists.
Crabbe has beautifully described this boon of our age, the study of Nature
aided by the light of science. It is nowadays the privilege as well as it
is to the profit of any intelligent person—
“The ocean’s produce to explore.
As floating by, or rolling on the shore,
Those living jellies which the flesh inflame,
Fierce as a nettle, and from that their name:
Some in huge masses, some that you may bring
In the small compass of a lady’s ring;
Figured by hand Divine—there’s not a gem
Wrought by man’s art to be compared to them;
Soft, brilliant, tender, through the wave they glow,
And make the moonbeams brighter where they flow.
Involved in sea‐wrack, here you find a race
Which science doubting, knows not where to place.
On shell or stone is dropped the embryo seed,
And quickly vegetates a vital breed;
While thus with pleasing wonder you inspect
Treasures the vulgar in their scorn reject.”