MEDUSAE OK JELLY-HSU. 39 



Acalephge is much increased when we reflect upon the ex- 

 tremely small quantity of solid matter which enters into their 

 composition. This fact admits of easy illustration, both in 

 the Beroes andHn the Medusa3. 



On one occasion we took a dead Cydippe, and placing it 

 on a piece of glass, exposed it to the sun. As the moisture 

 evaporated, the different parts appeared as if confusedly 

 painted on the glass, and when it was become perfectly dry, 

 a touch removed the only vestiges of what had been so lately 

 a graceful and animated being. 



With regard to the Medusa?, we may mention an anecdote 

 which we learned from an eminent zoologist, now a professor 

 in one of the English universities. He had, a few years ago, 

 beon delivering some zoological lectures in a seaport town in 

 Scotland, in the course of which he had adverted to some of 

 the most remarkable points in the economy of the Acalepha). 

 After the lecture, a farmer who had been present came forward, 

 and inquired if he had understood him correctly, as having 

 stated that the Medusa contained so little of solid material, 

 that they might be regarded as little else than a mass of ani- 

 mated sea- water? On being answered in the affirmative, he 

 remarked that it would have saved him many a pound had 

 he known that sooner, for he had been in the habit of employ- 

 ing his men and horses in carting away large quantities of 

 jelly-fish from the shore, and using them as manure on his 

 farm, and he now believed they could have been of little more 

 real use than an equal weight of sea-water. Assuming that 

 so much as one ton weight of Medusa3 recently thrown on the 

 beach had been carted away in one load, it will be found that, 

 according to the experiments of Professor Owen already men- 

 tioned,* the entire quantity of solid material would be only 

 about four pounds of avoirdupois weight, an amount of solid 

 material which, if compressed, the farmer might, with ease, 

 have carried home in one of his coat pockets I 



Perhaps there is no circumstance connected with this class 

 of animals more attractive or more remarkable than the power 

 they possess of emitting a beautiful phosphorescent light; 

 and, in some of the larger Medusse, this is of such intensity, 

 that they have been compared to balls of fire suspended in 

 the water. 



* Vide ante, page 30. 

 B2 



