CHAPTER X.

[pg 111]CHAPTER X.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 thatNatura 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 termzoophyte, derived from two Greek words signifying respectivelyanimalandplant, 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-footedanimals, and theInfusoria, 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 microscopicalgæ, or sea-weeds. It is believed that they are multiplied by parting with portions of their bodies, which become separate beings.TheReticulosa, orForaminifera, form an order of this group. They are small calcareous[pg 112]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. TheForaminifera, 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 containthree 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.”FORAMINIFERA IN A PIECE OF ROCK.FORAMINIFERA IN A PIECE OF ROCK.TheInfusoriaalmost 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 hairycilia, which act as paddles, while certain of them appear to be employed in conveying food to the mouth.INHABITANTS OF THE BRITISH SEAS.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.TheInfusoriareproduce 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[pg 113]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 twoStylonichiæwould have a progeny of more than 1,048,000 individuals, and that in a lapse of forty-two days a singleParameciumcould 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!PROPAGATION OF AN INFUSORIAN BY SPONTANEOUS DIVISION.PROPAGATION OF AN INFUSORIAN BY SPONTANEOUS DIVISION.Many of theInfusoriaare 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 theKondylostoma patens, remarkable for its voracity. It lives upon sea-weed, and is common to every shore, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic.KONDYLOSTOMA PATENS (MAGNIFIED 300 TIMES).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:—[pg 114]“Full fathoms five thy father lies;Of his bones are coral made;Those are pearls that were his eyes.Nothing of him that doth fadeBut 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[pg 115]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 theCœlenterata, 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 theHydrozoa, and that of theActinozoa. 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[pg 116]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.”MEDUSÆ.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[pg 117]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[pg 118]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, designatedAcalephæ, or“sea-nettles,”in consequence.PRAYA DIPHYES.PRAYA DIPHYES.Nearly all the other Hydrozoa are marine productions, and comprise among them numerous beautiful forms. Take, for example, the polyp known asPraya 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 aretwofloating bladders with a connectingchain of polyps; the floats aiding to support, as it were, a whole colony! But the large orderPhysophoridædeserves 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.”TheAgalma rubrais 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; ...[pg 119]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.AGALMA RUBRA (THREE-FIFTHS NATURAL SIZE).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,32while 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 thePrincess Louiseround 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[pg 120]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[pg 121]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.PHYSALIA ANTARCTICA.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.[pg 122]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 merelyhardscientists. 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 bringIn the small compass of a lady’s ring;Figured by hand Divine—there’s not a gemWrought 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 raceWhich 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 inspectTreasures the vulgar in their scorn reject.”

[pg 111]CHAPTER X.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 thatNatura 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 termzoophyte, derived from two Greek words signifying respectivelyanimalandplant, 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-footedanimals, and theInfusoria, 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 microscopicalgæ, or sea-weeds. It is believed that they are multiplied by parting with portions of their bodies, which become separate beings.TheReticulosa, orForaminifera, form an order of this group. They are small calcareous[pg 112]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. TheForaminifera, 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 containthree 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.”FORAMINIFERA IN A PIECE OF ROCK.FORAMINIFERA IN A PIECE OF ROCK.TheInfusoriaalmost 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 hairycilia, which act as paddles, while certain of them appear to be employed in conveying food to the mouth.INHABITANTS OF THE BRITISH SEAS.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.TheInfusoriareproduce 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[pg 113]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 twoStylonichiæwould have a progeny of more than 1,048,000 individuals, and that in a lapse of forty-two days a singleParameciumcould 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!PROPAGATION OF AN INFUSORIAN BY SPONTANEOUS DIVISION.PROPAGATION OF AN INFUSORIAN BY SPONTANEOUS DIVISION.Many of theInfusoriaare 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 theKondylostoma patens, remarkable for its voracity. It lives upon sea-weed, and is common to every shore, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic.KONDYLOSTOMA PATENS (MAGNIFIED 300 TIMES).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:—[pg 114]“Full fathoms five thy father lies;Of his bones are coral made;Those are pearls that were his eyes.Nothing of him that doth fadeBut 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[pg 115]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 theCœlenterata, 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 theHydrozoa, and that of theActinozoa. 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[pg 116]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.”MEDUSÆ.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[pg 117]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[pg 118]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, designatedAcalephæ, or“sea-nettles,”in consequence.PRAYA DIPHYES.PRAYA DIPHYES.Nearly all the other Hydrozoa are marine productions, and comprise among them numerous beautiful forms. Take, for example, the polyp known asPraya 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 aretwofloating bladders with a connectingchain of polyps; the floats aiding to support, as it were, a whole colony! But the large orderPhysophoridædeserves 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.”TheAgalma rubrais 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; ...[pg 119]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.AGALMA RUBRA (THREE-FIFTHS NATURAL SIZE).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,32while 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 thePrincess Louiseround 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[pg 120]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[pg 121]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.PHYSALIA ANTARCTICA.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.[pg 122]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 merelyhardscientists. 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 bringIn the small compass of a lady’s ring;Figured by hand Divine—there’s not a gemWrought 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 raceWhich 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 inspectTreasures the vulgar in their scorn reject.”

[pg 111]CHAPTER X.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 thatNatura 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 termzoophyte, derived from two Greek words signifying respectivelyanimalandplant, 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-footedanimals, and theInfusoria, 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 microscopicalgæ, or sea-weeds. It is believed that they are multiplied by parting with portions of their bodies, which become separate beings.TheReticulosa, orForaminifera, form an order of this group. They are small calcareous[pg 112]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. TheForaminifera, 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 containthree 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.”FORAMINIFERA IN A PIECE OF ROCK.FORAMINIFERA IN A PIECE OF ROCK.TheInfusoriaalmost 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 hairycilia, which act as paddles, while certain of them appear to be employed in conveying food to the mouth.INHABITANTS OF THE BRITISH SEAS.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.TheInfusoriareproduce 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[pg 113]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 twoStylonichiæwould have a progeny of more than 1,048,000 individuals, and that in a lapse of forty-two days a singleParameciumcould 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!PROPAGATION OF AN INFUSORIAN BY SPONTANEOUS DIVISION.PROPAGATION OF AN INFUSORIAN BY SPONTANEOUS DIVISION.Many of theInfusoriaare 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 theKondylostoma patens, remarkable for its voracity. It lives upon sea-weed, and is common to every shore, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic.KONDYLOSTOMA PATENS (MAGNIFIED 300 TIMES).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:—[pg 114]“Full fathoms five thy father lies;Of his bones are coral made;Those are pearls that were his eyes.Nothing of him that doth fadeBut 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[pg 115]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 theCœlenterata, 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 theHydrozoa, and that of theActinozoa. 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[pg 116]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.”MEDUSÆ.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[pg 117]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[pg 118]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, designatedAcalephæ, or“sea-nettles,”in consequence.PRAYA DIPHYES.PRAYA DIPHYES.Nearly all the other Hydrozoa are marine productions, and comprise among them numerous beautiful forms. Take, for example, the polyp known asPraya 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 aretwofloating bladders with a connectingchain of polyps; the floats aiding to support, as it were, a whole colony! But the large orderPhysophoridædeserves 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.”TheAgalma rubrais 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; ...[pg 119]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.AGALMA RUBRA (THREE-FIFTHS NATURAL SIZE).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,32while 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 thePrincess Louiseround 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[pg 120]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[pg 121]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.PHYSALIA ANTARCTICA.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.[pg 122]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 merelyhardscientists. 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 bringIn the small compass of a lady’s ring;Figured by hand Divine—there’s not a gemWrought 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 raceWhich 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 inspectTreasures the vulgar in their scorn reject.”

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.

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 thatNatura 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 termzoophyte, derived from two Greek words signifying respectivelyanimalandplant, 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-footedanimals, and theInfusoria, 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 microscopicalgæ, or sea-weeds. It is believed that they are multiplied by parting with portions of their bodies, which become separate beings.

TheReticulosa, orForaminifera, form an order of this group. They are small calcareous[pg 112]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. TheForaminifera, 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 containthree 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.”

FORAMINIFERA IN A PIECE OF ROCK.FORAMINIFERA IN A PIECE OF ROCK.

FORAMINIFERA IN A PIECE OF ROCK.

TheInfusoriaalmost 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 hairycilia, which act as paddles, while certain of them appear to be employed in conveying food to the mouth.

INHABITANTS OF THE BRITISH SEAS.INHABITANTS OF THE BRITISH SEAS.

INHABITANTS OF THE BRITISH SEAS.

TheInfusoriareproduce 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[pg 113]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 twoStylonichiæwould have a progeny of more than 1,048,000 individuals, and that in a lapse of forty-two days a singleParameciumcould 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!

PROPAGATION OF AN INFUSORIAN BY SPONTANEOUS DIVISION.PROPAGATION OF AN INFUSORIAN BY SPONTANEOUS DIVISION.

PROPAGATION OF AN INFUSORIAN BY SPONTANEOUS DIVISION.

Many of theInfusoriaare 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 theKondylostoma patens, remarkable for its voracity. It lives upon sea-weed, and is common to every shore, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic.

KONDYLOSTOMA PATENS (MAGNIFIED 300 TIMES).KONDYLOSTOMA PATENS (MAGNIFIED 300 TIMES).

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 fadeBut doth suffer a sea change”—

“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.”

“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[pg 115]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 theCœlenterata, 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 theHydrozoa, and that of theActinozoa. 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[pg 116]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.”

MEDUSÆ.MEDUSÆ.

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[pg 117]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[pg 118]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, designatedAcalephæ, or“sea-nettles,”in consequence.

PRAYA DIPHYES.PRAYA DIPHYES.

PRAYA DIPHYES.

Nearly all the other Hydrozoa are marine productions, and comprise among them numerous beautiful forms. Take, for example, the polyp known asPraya 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 aretwofloating bladders with a connectingchain of polyps; the floats aiding to support, as it were, a whole colony! But the large orderPhysophoridædeserves 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.”

TheAgalma rubrais 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; ...[pg 119]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.

AGALMA RUBRA (THREE-FIFTHS NATURAL SIZE).AGALMA RUBRA (THREE-FIFTHS NATURAL SIZE).

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,32while 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 thePrincess Louiseround 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[pg 120]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[pg 121]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.

PHYSALIA ANTARCTICA.PHYSALIA ANTARCTICA.

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 merelyhardscientists. 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 bringIn the small compass of a lady’s ring;Figured by hand Divine—there’s not a gemWrought 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 raceWhich 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 inspectTreasures the vulgar in their scorn reject.”

“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.”

Back to IndexNext