TWO YOUNG NATURALISTS. 281 



" The major was right. The phosphorescence of 

 the sea is really due to myriads of minute Medusae. 

 They are altogether singular animals, and many of 

 them undergo very strange metamorphoses." 

 - " Tell us about it, Uncle Bob," said Kene, throw- 

 ing overboard with his foot the jelly-fish, which again 

 commenced swimming as if nothing had happened. 



" Thus. The Medusa commences by producing an 

 egg. From this egg issues, not a Medusa, but a sort 

 of infusorian, furnished with vibratile ciliae, which for 

 some time leads a free life by rotating, but finishes 

 by attaching itself to some object under the water. 

 There it grows, branches out, and becomes a polype. 

 ' " Then new changes take place and contractions 

 are formed, so that the creature becomes like a series 

 of superposed discs. It breaks up, the discs become 

 detached, and each forms a jelly-fish, which grows and 

 later on produces eggs, and so the round is continued 

 Medusae and polypes, one after the other. The 

 series of transformations goes on in these lower beings 

 in such a way that the children are always dissimilar 

 from their parents, but resemble a generation of beings 

 that preceded these." 



They were approaching Etretat. The bark was 

 coasting beneath huge cliffs of chalk, mighty deposits 

 left by the seas of far distant geological epochs, and 

 that now rear themselves like colossal walls opposed 

 to the immensity of ocean. 



