336 NETHER LOCHABER. 



daring, would probably have resulted in something far more serious 

 than mere failure. In accounting for his non-success, and his state 

 of extreme exhaustion when taken out of the water, Cavill largely 

 blames the jelly-fish or sea-blubber, through perfect shoals of which 

 he had once and again to force his way ; and although he wore a 

 thin jersey, which must have been some protection, enough of the 

 bare skin was exposed to contact with the cold, clammy, slimy 

 Medusce, to make him exceedingly nervous and generally uncomfort- 

 able throughout a full third of the distance covered. The number 

 of these Medusae to be met with at certain seasons all along the 

 British shores is enormous ; and towards the close of summer and 

 early autumn they are more abundant, perhaps, in our western 

 lochs than anywhere else. Looking over the boat's side on a fine 

 day, we have seen them in our own Loch Leven in incalculable 

 numbers, thick as autumnal leaves in Vallambrosa, or the stars in 

 the Milky Way of all shapes and sizes too, swimming about 

 aimlessly by a slow but constant contraction and expansion, regular 

 as the beat of a pendulum, of their umbrella-like bodies, fringed 

 like a lady's parasol, with a close edging of' thread-like cilia, and 

 frequently having long, pendulous tentaculae attached to their under 

 surface, giving the healthy animal, when busy in its proper element, 

 a very curious appearance. Though the jelly-fish is in constant 

 motion in perpetual motion, so to speak, for it never rests, that 

 ever we could discover, either by night or day its progress in the 

 sea is rather due to the set of the wind and the tide-drift than its 

 own exertions, its incessant labours of contraction and expansion 

 being performed not so much for the purpose of shifting its place in 

 the water, as for the purpose of grasping and sucking in at each con- 

 traction such microscopic organisms as form its food. It is true that 

 in a calm and tideless sea its motions cause it to be carried in the 

 direction of the contracting beat an inch or thereby at a time, but this 

 progress is clearly accidental and unintentional, so far as it is con- 



