{40 THE WORLD OF THE SEA. 
most pleasing contrast with the azure of the surrounding waters.” 
_ Take care how you touch the little living vessel: a sting far more 
painful than that of the nettle will be inflicted on the too venture- 
some hand. This sensation is produced by a blue corrosive liquid, 
of a syrupy consistence. The pain does not readily subside, and 
sometimes it is attended with a disposition to faint. Generally the 
irritation does not extend further than the hand. “The galley,” 
says Father Feuillée, “has occasioned me such violent pain when I 
have touched it that convulsions have ensued. Father Dutertre, 
when he was in the Antilles, was one day sailing in a small boat, 
when he saw one of these little vessels. Desirous of knowing the 
form of the animal, he tried to take it in his hand. “But I had 
scarcely seized it,” he writes, “when all its fibres seemed to clasp 
my hand, covering it as with bird-lime; and I had hardly felt it in 
all its freshness—for it is very cold to the touch—when it seemed as 
if I had plunged my arm up to the shoulder in boiling oil; and 
this was accompanied with pains so strange that I could scarcely 
5) 
prevent myself from shrieking.” Leblond, in his “ Voyage aux 
Antilles,” gives a figure of a Physalia pelagica, and narrates the 
following: “One day I was bathing with some friends in a bay 
which was in front of the house where I dwelt ; while my friends 
fished for sardines for breakfast, I amused myself by diving, after 
the fashion of the native Caribbeans, under the wave as it was about 
to break. . . . This daring nearly cost me my life. A galley, 
many of which were cast up upon the beach, fastened itself to my 
left shoulder. As soon as the sea cast me on the shore, I quickly 
tore it off, but some of its filaments remained sticking to my skin. 
The pain I immediately experienced was so intense that I nearly 
fainted. I seized an oil flask which was at hand, swallowed one- 
half, and rubbed the affected parts with the rest, but the pain went 
to my heart, and I fainted. Upon coming to myself I felt well 
enough to return to the house; a couple of hours’ rest made me 
better, and the pain disappeared during the night.” 
Meyen, during the first voyage of the Princess Louise round the 
world, saw a magnificent physalia, which passed near the ship. A 
young sailor, bold and courageous, leapt into the sea, naked, to 
secure the animal. Swimming towards it, he seized it; the 
creature wrapped its assailant in its thread-like filaments, which 
