WHEN NIGHT COMES TO WATER 



but was helpless to do more than ladle it about. 

 It was several feet in diameter and quite too 

 enormous to dip up more than a fraction at a time. 

 I secured many small Bumpers and lost so many, 

 that I estimated that there must have been several 

 hundred at least. 



Every night I caught sight of other jellyjBsh, 

 waving their exquisite little transparent umbrellas, 

 and there were ctenophores, shaped exactly like 

 fourth of July paper balloons, with rows of shining 

 cilia, — all appearing more solid and weighty in 

 their shadows than in themselves. 



Free-swimming sea-worms have never carried as 

 deep an appeal for me as have other groups of 

 animals. Many of them sting rather badly, and 

 they do not enjoy being studied quietly in aquari- 

 ums. Whatever interesting habits they may have 

 are usually confined to their tunnels and burrows. 

 But here at my light I had to pay attention to 

 worms or shut off the light. They never failed to 

 come; sometimes, as on the night of March thirty- 

 first, in many thousands. Some were pink with 

 white heads, others had a series of green scales 

 down the sides; tiny threadlike chaps sent out an 

 astonishingly powerful green phosphorescent light, 

 and a grey worm with a black cap was one of the 

 fastest swimming creatures I have ever seen — a 

 veritable vermiform electron. Some moved so 

 straight and steadily that they might have been 

 propelled by a tiny turbine, but most travelled by 

 frantic wiggling. The energy developed before my 



87 



