90 THE AQUARIAN NATURALIST. 



CHAPTER IX. 



" ! mourn not, that in nature, transitory 



/ & 



Are all her fairest and her loveliest thing's." 



o 



CYDIPPE FOMIFORMIS, THE APPLE-SHAPED BEROE. 



AMONGST all the elegant forms of the Medusae none 

 can compete with the Beroe (Cydippe) pomiformis, or 

 emulate the wonderful machinery whereby it frolics in 

 the glassy water. In the bright sunshine, on the level 

 sand, just where the gentle ripples "kiss the shore, 

 then sleep in silence," the observant eye may some- 

 times see a pearl for such it looks to be worthy of 

 being a pendent to the one dissolved by Cleopatra, 

 but so frail, so delicate, so evanescent, that it must 

 be taken up with tenderest care by those who would 

 survey its beauties, and at once transferred into a ves- 

 sel filled with its own element. Its body is then seen 

 to be a little globe of clearest crystal (PL I. ng. 10) 

 tinted with the hues of Iris, and, moreover, fringed 

 from pole to pole with eight transparent bands of 

 active cilia rapidly at work, by the aid of which it glides 

 along, advancing like a meteor through the water. 



It is, however, when the Beroe's* have just been 

 taken from the sea that they exhibit in the highest 

 perfection their locomotive powers, and display in the 



* Patterson. 



