PLINY ON SEA-NETTLES. 31 



behaviour of some specimens of a small Jelly-fisn not larger than a 

 lady's thimble, which occurs around our northern coasts : " Being 

 kept in a jar of salt water with small Crustacea, they devoured 

 these animals, so much more highly organized than themselves, 

 voraciously, apparently enjoying the destruction of the un- 

 fortunate members of the upper classes with a truly democratic 

 relish. One of them even attacked and commenced the swal- 

 lowing of a Lizzia octopunctata, quite as good a Medusa as 

 itself. An animal which can pout out its mouth twice the 

 length of its body, and stretch its stomach to corresponding 

 dimensions, must indeed be a 'triton among the minnows,' 

 and a very terrific one too. Yet is this ferocious creature one 

 of the most delicate and graceful inhabitants of the ocean a 

 very model of tenderness and elegance." 



In worthy Philemon Holland's version of Pliny, there is a 

 passage descriptive of the predaceous habits of the Jelly-fish, 

 which has about it an air of such exquisite drollery that we can 

 hardly help suspecting the dear old fabulist was purposely 

 caricaturing what he professes' to describe : " I verily, for my 

 part, am of opinion," says he, "that those which properly are 

 neither beasts nor plants, but of a third nature between or com- 

 pounded of both (the sea-nettles, I mean, and sponges), haue 

 yet a kinde of sense with them. As for those Nettles, there 

 be of them that in the night raunge too and fro, and likewise 

 change their colour. Leaues they carry of a fieshie substance, 

 and of flesh they feed. Their qualitie is to raise an itching 

 smart, like for all the world to the weed on the land so called. 

 His manner is, when he would prey, to gather in his body as 

 close, streight, and stiffe as possibly may be. He spieth not 

 so soon a silly little fish swimming before him, but he spraideth 

 and displaieth those leaues of his, like wings ; with them he 

 claspeth the poore fish, and so deuoures it. At other times he 

 lies as if he had no life at all in him, suffering himselfe to be 

 tossed and cast too and fro among the weeds, with the wanes of 

 the sea : and look what fish soeuer he toucheth as he is thus 

 floting, hee sets a smart itch vpon them, and whiles they stratch 

 and rub themselues against the rockcs for this itch, hee sets 

 vpon them and eates them. In the night season he lieth. for 

 sea-vrchins and scalops." 



It is amongst the true " s tang-fish," of course those, that 



