82 ITS VORACITY. 



foremost, whether the direction of the movement be 

 vertical, horizontal, or, as is most commonly the case, 

 oblique ; and the tentacles, and the long white pro- 

 boscis, drag behind in trailing lines. Now and anon, 

 the shooting is suddenly suspended, the bell hangs 

 over and remains awhile motionless, the tentacles are 

 allowed to depend like spiders' webs, or are suddenly 

 drawn up into shrivelled puckers, become mutually 

 entangled and intertwisted, then slowly free themselves 

 and hang down again. Sometimes the motionless 

 bell itself sinks very gradually, and the tentacle- 

 threads take the most elegant curves and arches in 

 their descent. 



The Sarsia is voracious, and the long and flexible 

 peduncle is not only the stomach which digests the 

 prey, but the hand that stretches forth to seek and 

 to grasp it. I put into the bottle containing several 

 the minute green-eyed fry of some fish, newly hatched, 

 about half-an-inch in length. In a very few minutes 

 I saw that a Sarsia had caught the little fish, which 

 was seized and partly swallowed by the clubbed extre- 

 mity of the peduncle. For hours afterwards the prey 

 was visible, though more and more engulphed ; the 

 large head and prominent green eyes of the victim 

 being very conspicuous.* 



* Professor Agassiz, with whose masterly tract on a closely allied 

 species I was not at this time acquainted, states that Sarsia mirahiUs, 

 with all the small N"aked-eyed Medvxsse of the North American coasts, 

 disappears about the middle of summer, being killed by the heavy 

 rains of that season. (Mem. Amer. Acad. iv. 228.) If I were to judge 

 only by my Weymouth experience, I should say our Naked-eyed 

 Medusae conformed to the same rule ; as, though I searched often in 

 various situations, I scarcely obtained an individual of any species 

 after the date above mentioned. Yet, in the Bristol Channel, many 



