380 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



small, angular, double-pointed bits of glassy jelly, 

 each with a pink nucleus, many connected so ten- 

 aciously in chains that they could be lifted up like 

 a string of living pearls. 



One of the officers with the memory of the shark 

 steak still vivid, said, "Well, I suppose you people 

 would even eat that stuff!" whereat we all solemnly 

 proceeded to eat a salpa. We got no enjoyment 

 from this bit of bravado — just a sensation of very 

 salty hard jelly. And then I aroused all the con- 

 ventional, anti-Darwinian beliefs of our good skip- 

 per by informing him that in eating salpa I had, 

 rather indirectly, been guilty of cannibalism, in 

 that, far from being related to jellyfish, these ob- 

 long, glassy blobs of life claimed cousinship with 

 ourselves and other backboned animals. But they 

 have fallen to the lowest point in the scale — even 

 the sea-squirts clinging to our wharf piles parad- 

 ing more highly developed offspring. 



Salpse have an intricate succession of alternate 

 generations, so complex that no genealogist could 

 ever straighten it out. The young larva develops 

 attached to the blood system of the parent and after 

 a while swims off by itself, wholly unlike its parent 

 in appearance, structure and habits, and even quite 

 sexless. After swirmning for a time it develops 

 a stolon on which buds form which in time become 

 adult sexual salpse. These are hberated in sets 

 of long chains, which in turn swim off chummily 

 together, ultimately separating into individuals, 

 who become the parents of the larvae which com- 

 plete the cycle. 



