ADVENTURE WITH A JELLY-FISH. 303 



deadly poison into a thousand tiny wounds. I quote 

 the following from his own account of the accident : 



One morning towards the end of July, while swimming off the 

 Margate coast, I saw at a distance something that looked like a patch 

 of sand, occasionally visible, and occasionally covered, as it were, by 

 the waves, which were then running high in consequence of a 

 lengthened gale which had not long gone down. Knowing the coast 

 pretty well, and thinking that no sand ought to be in such a locality, 

 I swam towards the strange object, and had got within some eight or 

 ten yards of it before finding that it was composed of animal sub- 

 stance. I naturally thought that it must be the refuse of some 

 animal that had been thrown overboard, and swam away from it, 

 not being anxious to come in contact with so unpleasant a sub- 

 stance. 



While still approaching it I had noticed a slight tingling in the 

 toes of the left foot, but as I invariably suffer from cramp in those 

 regions while swimming, I took the " pins-and-needles " sensation for 

 a symptom of the accustomed cramp, and thought nothing of it. As 

 I swam on, however, the tingling extended further and further, and 

 began to feel very much like the sting of a nettle. Suddenly the 

 truth flashed across me, and I made for shore as fast as I could. 



On turning round for that purpose, I raised my right arm out of 

 the water, and found that dozens of slender and transparent threads 

 were hanging from it, and evidently still attached to the medusa, 

 now some forty or fifty feet away. The filaments were slight and deli- 

 cate as those of a spider's web, but there the similitude ceased, for 

 each was armed with a myriad poisoned darts that worked their way 

 into the tissues, and affected the nervous system like the stings of 

 wasps. 



Before I reached shore the pain had become fearfully severe, and 

 on quitting the cool waves it was absolute torture. Wherever one 

 of the multitudinous threads had come in contact with the skin there 

 appeared a light scarlet line, which on closer examination was 

 resolvable into minute dots or pustules ; and the sensation was much 

 as if each dot were charged with a red-hot needle gradually making 

 its way through the nerves. The slightest touch of the clothes was 

 agony, and as I had to walk more than two miles before reaching my 



