ON THE medusa:. 155 



be the true cause, it is not less certain, that to such and such 

 latitudes belong exclusively such and such species of Medusae : 

 it is in such situations that the astonished observer meets 

 with those immense shoals of similar individuals, in the midst 

 of which he sometimes sails for several days, but of which 

 the ocean afterwards furnishes him with no traces. This 

 curious circumstance in the existence of the animals of which 

 we are speaking, having been the object of our especial atten- 

 tion, we shall not fail to join to the history of each genus, a 

 geographical table of the distribution of all the species of 

 which it is composed. 



ff There are, in the same way, different seasons when the 

 Medusae show themselves in different countries; and this ob- 

 servation becomes particularly valuable as regards the history 

 of those which live in our own seas. These Zoophytes do not 

 in fact appear on the coasts of Italy, of Spain, of France, of 

 England, of Sweden, of Denmark, of Iceland, of Greenland, 

 and of Spitzbergen, until the middle of spring ; they are most 

 particularly abundant there during the dog-days : their num- 

 ber diminishes on the approach of autumn, and about the 

 middle of November their countless legions disappear, and 

 go, perhaps, like many other marine animals, to bury them- 

 selves and become insensible in the depths of the sea. In 

 the seas under the equator, on the contrary, the Medusae co- 

 ver the waters, even in the midst of the winter of those coun- 

 tries; and everything shows that these latter species are 

 strangers to the migrations, or rather hybernation, of the Me- 

 dusae of our climates. Considered under this point of view, 

 our work will, we think, offer some new and interesting re- 

 sults. Domestic economy has not entirely neglected the Me- 

 dusae; Diphilus, Siphnius, Dioscorides, and the other physi- 

 cians of ancient Greece, mention them as a valuable remedy 

 for the gout, chilblain, &c. 



" Philippides in his Amphiarus, Athenaeus in the third book 

 of the Deipnosophistes, mention the species e velella' as ex- 

 cellent eating; and again in our own times, the same animals 

 are greedily sought after by the epicures of Sicily, by those 

 of the Ionian Sea, and especially by the Greeks of the Morea. 

 In some places the Medusae are employed to manure the land. 



" None of these facts will be foreign to the history in which 

 we are engaged : to collect them and set them forth with care, 

 will undoubtedly draw a fresh degree of interest towards ani- 

 mals which have been too much neglected, under the double 

 relation of science and of public utility. So many singu- 

 larities mark the animals of which we are writing, that it is 

 not surprising that amongst different nations they should 



