JELLY-FISUES. 361 



end ■sve must take the liberty of catcliing you and of 

 transtcrring your translucency to isolated grandeur in 

 this other glass. Ila ! but you doirt want to be caught, 

 eh? And so you pump and shoot round and round tho 

 jar as the spoon approaches ! Truly you are a supple 

 little subject, difficult to catch as a flea, and difficult to 

 ];old (in a spoon) as an eel. But here you are at last, 

 lying as motionless and as helpless in the silver as a 

 halt-melted atom of calf's-foot jelly, to which, indeed, 

 you possess no small resemblance. 



Look at the pretty little Medusa in his new abode, 

 at once recovering all his jelly-hood as he feels the 

 water laving him, and dashing about his new domain 

 with a vigour which makes up for lost time. 



It is a tall bell of glass, a little contracted at the 

 mouth — its outline forming an ellipse, from which 

 about a third has been cut off. The margin of this 

 bell carries four tiny knobs, set at equal distances, and 

 thus quartering the periphery ; and these are the more 

 conspicuous because each one is marked with a briglit 

 orange-coloured speck. Physiologists are pretty well 

 agreed to consider such specks as these, on the margins 

 of the smaller Medusae^ as eyes, — rudimentary organs 

 of vision, capable, probably, of appreciating the 

 presence and the stimulus of light, without the power 

 of forming any visual image of external objects. You 

 will not gain much information about tlieir function 

 from microscopic examination ; for all you can discern 

 is an aggregation of coloured specks (pigment-granules) 

 in the midst of the common jelly. 



The knobs, however, are connected with other 

 organs ; for from each of them depends a highly sensi- 

 tive. and very contractile tentacle. Sometimes one, or 

 16 



