338 NETHER LOCHABER. 



are not so numerous on our shores as the true Medusa, but they 

 grow to a much larger size, some of them measuring eighteen, twenty, 

 or even twenty-four inches across the disc, and thick and heavy in 

 proportion, large enough, when fresh from the sea, to fill a tub of 

 considerable size. If one of these wretches comes in contact with 

 the human skin, it is found to sting like a nettle, only much more 

 severely, and hence its scientific name. A swimmer stung by contact 

 with an acaleph feels not only the cruel smarting of the nettle-like 

 and burning stinging, but he is in a few minutes frequently over- 

 come by a feeling of languor and sickness, that lasts for a consider- 

 able time, and is sometimes only relieved by a violent fit of vomiting, 

 just as if he was a sufferer for the moment under the influence of a 

 powerful emetic. We have more than once been stung by an acaleph, 

 and can speak feelingly on the subject. Only last season a boy on 

 the opposite coast of Appin was, while bathing, so severely stung 

 by one or more acalephs that he was for some days confined to bed, 

 seriously ill, and under medical treatment. This power of stinging 

 seems to be a wise provision in the economy of the animal, for the 

 purpose of rendering helpless and numbing its prey, to make them 

 easier of capture and subsequent deglutition, just as the Mysotis, or 

 electric eel, with like purpose puts to a very important and practical 

 use its electro-battery shocks. The true acaleph may generally be 

 distinguished from the more harmless jelly-fish by having a good 

 deal of colour in its tissues, being striated with red, pink, and pale 

 green, which gives it a very beautiful appearance as under the 

 bright sunlight it floats about, contracting and expanding with the 

 regularity of a pendulum beat, near the surface of the calm, unruffled 

 sea. The amount of solid matter in a jelly-fish of any kind, how- 

 ever large, is amazingly small. Within a thin, filmy skin, they are 

 entirely made up of water, with a few threads spider-net-wise run- 

 ning through it to keep it in shape, like the ropes on which was 

 stretched the immense velarium of an ancient amphitheatre. After 



