24 ANIMALS OF LAND AND SEA 



little in them, and that Httle is sometimes very bitter. That 

 curious fish-hke creature called in our text-books Amphioxus 

 and supposed to be a primitive vertebrate is an important 

 article of food in at least one town in China. 



Swimming lazily in the summer sea the flabby jelly-fish are 

 curious objects, and the more strikingly colored ones, red, 

 purple or sky blue, are often very handsome. As we see them 

 from the deck of a steamer or a yacht they may excite our 

 interest, though never in the same way that it is aroused by 

 the sound of the dinner-bell. Yet jelly-fishes are in various 

 places an important article of food. In Japan a large kind is 

 abundant in the Inland Sea which is caught in quantities and 

 preserved with a mixture of alum and salt, or between the 

 steamed leaves of a kind of oak. It is later soaked in water 

 and flavored with condiments, and when so prepared con- 

 stitutes an agreeable food. Other large jelly-fishes are eaten 

 in the Philippines and elsewhere; and in order that we of 

 European descent may not regard this as altogether an out- 

 landish procedure I may mention that in Europe also jelly- 

 fishes were eaten in the past, as far north as Cornwall in 

 England. 



Among the sea-worms there is one which is very important 

 as an article of food in many places in Polynesia, called the 

 palolo. When fully grown it averages about i6 inches in 

 length and is sharply divided into a thick anterior part, about 

 one quarter of its length, and a slender posterior part. In 

 the slender hinder part the eggs are formed; and on or near 

 the day of the last quarter of the moon in October and Novem- 

 ber the worm wriggles backward in its burrow in the coral rock 

 or similar situation and breaks off the long hinder end, which 

 rises to the surface and swims about, finally bursting and 

 scattering the eggs. These swarming worm ends are considered 

 a great delicacy by the natives and are gathered in great 

 quantities. In Samoa and in Fiji this swarming is well known 

 and has been carefully studied. The same or a similar worm 

 occurs in the same way at other places^ in the Gilbert and 



