Caranx and a Crambessa. 265 
seize and draw towards the mouth by means of their tentacles, 
their arms, and the urticating organs with which these are 
armed. This is what Spallanzani* supposed, he having 
seen a small fish adhering to one of the appendages of a 
Medusa which he had just captured. Miiller , Otho Fabri- 
cius {, Dicquemare §, and Bosc || state that they had seen 
Meduse digest fishes. According to Péron and Lesueur |] 
the Meduse make their regular prey of fishes from 12 to 15 
centimetres long; and although their stomachs appear inca- 
pable of having any kind of action upon those animals, the 
latter were digested in a few moments. Gaede ** asserts 
that he found small fishes in the stomachs of Meduse that he 
dissected. Hysenhardt and Chamisso{} have also stated that 
they several times met with the heads and remains of fishes, 
which had apparently been digested, in the stomachs of 
Medusz, Professor de Blainville {{ says that he had himself 
sometimes found small fishes in A’quoree and even in Rhizo- 
stomes ; but he questions whether these small fishes had really 
been captured by the Acalephs, or whether they did not oceur 
by accident where they were found. Cuvier was of the latter 
opinion, at any rate with regard to the Rhizostomes, having 
ascertained that those animals draw up their nourishment 
by a kind of suckers. Quoy and Gaimard §§, referring to the 
authors above cited, who declared that they had seen Medusze 
digest fishes, think themselves able to assert that so compli- 
cated a phenomenon of digestion is perfectly impossible in the 
case of some species which are destitute of suitable organs for 
effecting it. In support of their assertion, and as furnishing 
an indisputable proof of it, these naturalists cite the capture 
made by them of a new species of Dianea in the Mediter- 
ranean, near the coast of Valencia and the Balearic Islands. 
This Medusa, the structure of which did not differ at all 
from that of the other Radiaria of the same genus, presented 
no aperture which could enable it to allow the entrance of any 
substance of appreciable bulk. As to the figure given by 
Miller, and reproduced by other authors, of a Medusa swal- 
lowing a fish, Quoy and Gaimard say that it proves nothing, 
for, as Cuvier had pointed out, this fish could very easily have 
* Opuscoli di fisica animale e vegetabile, 1776. 
t+ Zoologia Danica, 1776-89. { Fauna Greenlandica, 1780, 
§ Phil. Trans. and ‘ London Physical Journal.’ 
|| Histoire naturelle des Vers, 1802-15. 
q Annales du Muséum, 1809, tome xiv. p. 325. 
** Beitrage zur Anatomie und Physiologie der Medusen, 1816. 
tt Acta Acad. Leopold. Nat. Cur. 1821, vol. x. part 2. 
tt Dict. des Sci. Nat. 1825, tome xxix. pp. 389 et segq. 
§§ Voyage de l’Uranie, 1824, Zoologie, pp. 559 et seq. 
